Love is the Fulfilling of the Law
ON LOVE; PART CCLXXXIX
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
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).
Today is the 700th edition of In the Words of Jesus and as we come upon the two year mark near the end of this month, we find ourselves saying much the same things as we started with while adding in the revelations that we have been able to bring into our waking consciousness. Among these is that in our enlightened use of the words of the the Master and His disciples, we have found the Truth and the answers to many questions hidden behind the words and we have seen that the clearest of Jesus words are among the most difficult for man to accomplish and among the least understood. In the last post we discussed our understanding of the concept of predestination; some doctrines, especially those aligned with the Calvinist philosophy, believe that the decisions of God regarding the saved and the unsaved are made in a way that they consider predestinated and foreordained. For some denominations this belief IS codified and while it may not be taught as it was written, it is a general part of some doctrines and beliefs. Our objective here is to make our own claim as to the shortsightedness with which these ideas are formulated and preserved from the times of the Protestant Reformation until now. We should note that the formulation of these doctrines is a part of the basic belief that man IS this form in the world who has a Soul which will carry the essence of his Life, for good or for evil, into eternity. Contrary to this IS our understanding of Life in its complexity where we see that the man IS the Soul and that he incarnates in form according to the Plan of God, part of which we see in Paul’s words to the Romans, and with the intention of being delivered which IS the eventual expression of the Love and the Power of the Soul through his Life in this world. The Apostle Paul say it this way:
“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 8:20-21).
We do use these words frequently and this because of what we believe IS our own revelation concerning them, that in these few words we have the existence of man in this Earth and the predestination of his being delivered. We should note here that there is both reference to the individual and to mankind as this word rendered as creature has the dual meaning of both the individual and the whole 2 and, with no mention of either birth or death, we should be able to see the overall reality as it effects ALL men in its purpose and the individual in its effect and that this “glorious liberty” IS then the destiny of mankind. The apostle continues saying that:
“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 the reference is again to the whole and we should see the pain as this existence in the world subjected to vanity which is for us the illusions and the glamours of Life in form and we should try to see that the pain IS NOT to the man in the world as much as it IS to the Soul. For the man in the world the pain is in the unfulfilled desires and the escalation of desires as there IS NEVER True satisfaction with such focus on these things; for the Soul the pain IS his struggles to gain control of the wayward personality in the world, to wrest away the focus of Life and place it properly on the things of God. The apostle separates the they from the us as he differentiates between those who have “the firstfruits of the Spirit“, the disciples in the world, and those who are focused in the world or in the duality of Life through a shared focus upon both. It IS both that are found in their own version of pain which IS not over until that final Redemption which we can see as that final state where a man can say with the Master that “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). It IS here that we find “the glorious liberty of the children of God“.
In our view this IS the extent of predestination as it relates to the race of men, to mankind who IS predestinated and foreordained to this existence in the illusion and glamour of Life and to the eventual release from this and into that “the glorious liberty” through that process that we call discipleship. This view is likely shared by few in the church yet today and as we said yesterday and above, there is a basic understanding in some corners of the church that IS quite contrary to our view and that says things such as these:
- Calvin describes and defends the doctrine of predestination, a doctrine advanced by Augustine in opposition to the teachings of Pelagius. Fellow theologians who followed the Augustinian tradition on this point included Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther, though Calvin’s formulation of the doctrine went further than the tradition that went before him. The principle, in Calvin’s words, is that “All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death. †
- According to the Westminster Confession of Faith as adopted by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and reaffirmed as recently as 1993, we find these among its tenets as a part of Chapter Three:
- III. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death.
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IV. These angels and men, thus predestinated, and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed, and their number so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or diminished.
- V. Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to his eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of his will, hath chosen, in Christ, unto everlasting glory, out of his mere free grace and love, without any foresight of faith, or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving him thereunto; and all to the praise of his glorious grace.
- The Lutheran traditions also see similar ideas in this doctrine of predestination as stated by Calvin and expanded by Martin Luther who says: All things whatever arise from, and depend on, the divine appointment; whereby it was foreordained who should receive the word of life, and who should disbelieve it; who should be delivered from their sins, and who should be hardened in them; and who should be justified and who should be condemned. Despite this rather clear statement by Luther there is controversy in the Lutheran Church regarding predestination as a guiding principal.
- These same ideas of predestination creep into many Christian denominations in ways other than the stated doctrines concerning the Calvinistic and Lutheran ideas above; this includes the more common Christian understanding that ‘God has a plan for your Life‘ in which we can see hints of the predestination philosophy. Although the reality here is more so that we listen for the prompting of the Soul and heed the call, the fundamental idea is that God KNOWS each of us and He has a plan that we need to discover.
As we said in the last post, we came upon this theme of predestination as we appointed that idea from our own perspective to the conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus, his Repentance and the beginning of his rather rapid Transformation to be more correct, which was a matter of him, as a Soul, being predestined to be a ready help in the service of the Master. This is not unlike the same coming into incarnation with the Master that is seen in the other apostles, disciples and those who played a role in this Great Drama. In our view ALL were of advanced degree insofar as the then criteria for discipleship allowed and as such did come at the right time into the world with the ability to see through the illusion and the glamour as they are awakened to the Truth as men in form by the prompting of their own Souls and ARE perhaps aided in so doing by the presence of the Master Himself. In this group of apostles and disciples and others, as we have appointed many over our 700 essays, we have the centurion of the Gospels who, being a Roman, sets the example of faith for the disciples, Joseph of Arimathaea who authoritatively takes care of the body of Jesus and provides the needed sepulchre, Mary and Joseph, the worldly parents of the Christ Child, who KNOW and understand their responsibilities and Simeon and Anna who give comfort and reassurance to the the parents in a time of apparent confusion and need. To these we should add the Three Wise Men who help deflect the wrath of Herod away from the Child and the shepherds who hear the call of the angel and the heavenly host and come to the ‘manger’ to see the Child, likely to the wonderment of the parents. And there are many others to be sure who are predestinated to serve in their own particular way so that the success of the Master’s mission can be insured against the free-will of the men in the world. Individually, this IS the extent of the concept of predestination and it may be to this that Paul refers in some of his comments; this is self imposed by the Soul and not preordained by God although in the realm of heaven and in the working of the eternal now, ALL things ARE KNOWN save the actions of man in the world who is so focused on the self and the self in the world that he hears naught of the promptings of the Soul. This should not be taken to preclude that action by the Soul that can change and influence the personality in the world as we speak about in recent posts but rather we should remember that it IS the Soul’s objective to take control of the Life in the world for the purpose of his expression of the Love and the Power of the Soul in the Life of the personality in the world.
There are other doctrinal concepts and philosophies like predestination as understood by the church and we will likely come upon at least some of them as we proceed with our essays. For this one, there are parts of the church that believe in its Truth and there are parts that flatly do not; there are yet others that accept it as a tenet of faith but do not use it in their religious practice. And there are yet others who take the ‘God has a plan for your Life‘ philosophy and work this into their sermons and practices and this, while it may border on predestination, can be made to seem quite different. Of course from our perspective there IS a Plan and it IS summarized for us by Paul in his Epistle to the Romans as we quote above. Reading this the way that we do we can clearly see that we ARE here in the world awash in the vanity, the illusion and the glamour of Life, and the Plan IS to get out; not so much out of the world but out of the illusion and the glamour which is accomplished by overcoming by changing our our focus on the Soul and the Christ Within. Paul tells us that we are here “not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope” which reason IS the Plan of God and which hope IS that expectation, that KNOWING, that we ALL “shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God“. This is the predestination of mankind and this IS the Plan of God and while the possibility does exist that humanity can end this ALL in a nuclear holocaust, there are likely enough disciples of the Lord in incarnation, most likely voluntarily, at any given time to prevent this and this has likely been True down the ages.
Never before has mankind been so close to the brink with the capability for mass destruction as in this present time and while there is much here that we DO NOT understand, catastrophe has so far been averted. But there IS yet much to do to assure the Peace and the progression of humanity. The Master’s message is Love; is anyone Truly listening?
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.
Continuing with our presentation of the Prayer of Saint Francis as the Quote of the Day, we should realize that without the apparent links to doctrine, this is well suited to be the Prayer of the disciple and therefore our prayer as well as aspirants to that High Calling. Of course these things that we are saying here in this prayer ARE expressions of Love, ALL of them, and it is by our example in the world that we express them and in the idea of sowing we can find our ‘suggestion’ of’ Love, pardon, faith, hope, Light and joy to those whom we may contact and who may be feeling the opposites. The second stanza is more personal from the perspective of subduing one’s own personality and its ‘needs’ by seeing the needs of one’s brother and neighbor and the stranger who qualifies as both FIRST. And, as we say below, we should see this idea of dying not in the context of the our death on Earth but in the context of the Apostle Paul’s words that tell us: “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23). This sin is for us our focus upon the things of the world and this death IS one’s continued existence here in this world entombed in the illusion and the glamour….eternal Life then IS our realization of the Truth of Life of the True man, the Soul, the Christ Within which we find when we turn our focus to the things of God.
This is the Prayer of Saint Francis which we repeat again from a previous post as our Quote of the Day. If we were all to accept these ideas as guiding Lights in our lives, we would be expressing the Love and the Faith that the Master teaches. It is attributed to the 13th-century saint Francis of Assisi, although the prayer in its present form cannot be traced back further than 1912*. Regardless of the True authorship, the sentiments revealed in this prayer are genuine and are in keeping the intent of the teachings of the Master and His apostles. We should note here that the dying is not necessarily the death of the body but the death of the carnal man in the world when one is born again. In this context we read this about Saint Francis: Francis was the son of a wealthy foreign cloth merchant in Assisi, and he lived the high-spirited life typical of a wealthy young man, even fighting as a soldier for Assisi. While going off to war in 1204, Francis had a vision that directed him back to Assisi, where he lost his taste for his worldly life**. Here is the antithesis of the rich young man of the gospels.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury,pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen
This is a prayer that is Truly in line with the teachings of the Master and the ideals encapsulated in this should be those that govern our lives and our prayer should be that ALL can see Life in this same way. We should try to see the reality of these words in the verses above regarding feeding and visiting the least of His and our brethren; in these words is a deeper meaning, as clearer expression of Love and, we should look at the Master’s words above as an expression of Love and not merely in the terms that He presents as this is the intent of the entirety of His teachings.
Let the peace of God rule in your hearts!
- 2 New Testament Greek Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
- * Wikipedia contributors. “Prayer of Saint Francis.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 24 Jan. 2013
- **Wikipedia contributors. “Francis of Assisi.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 24 Jan. 2013.
- † Wikipedia contributors. “John Calvin.”Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 7 Jun. 2013.
