Love is the Fulfilling of the Law
ON LOVE; PART CCLXXXVI
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).
In the last post we returned to the words of the Apostle Paul as he speaks to the Epicureans and the Stoics at Athens regarding the Nature of God and how the God that he is preaching IS the SAME as the God which they believe Him to be, that there can be ONLY ONE God. In support of his claim, the apostle tells these Greeks many things and he tells them from the perspective of a disciple and an apostle of the Lord, a perspective in which the Light of the Soul reveals to the man in the world the Truths that he can understand. It IS these Truths that the apostle offers and these educated philosophers of their time listen attentively as Paul speaks with authority and with conviction. As we discussed, Paul’s preaching IS NOT about Christ, although his speaking about Christ is what brought him to their attention, but is about the Generality of the Godhead if we can say it this way. He speaks to them about the God that they see and relates Him to the God that the Christian sees and gives evidence as to why these ARE the SAME, why there can be ONLY ONE. His argument is cogent and bears no mark of doctrine nor does it address God from the Jewish perspective; He offers the Truth as he sees it in the Light of the Soul from which flows the Wisdom from above and, as Paul later tells us, the fruit of the Spirit. Paul’s only interest in this dialogue seems to be to tell these scholars that their God and his God ARE the SAME God and through this recorded speech to tell ALL men that this IS a universal Truth.
We have not however gotten this message as history shows and if we look around at the rhetoric today we find that this is still not understood as man allows his personality to define God and separate Him from the definition of God developed by others. However if the Hindu and the Buddhist believe that God as they understand Him is the creator of ALL, then He must per force be the same God that the Christian sees and worships….there can ONLY BE ONE. Paul recognizes this human failing and in these few words to these Greeks sets the Truth in order for them and for us and we must understand this; but more, we MUST teach this in our schools and in our churches as this is a basic and fundamental understanding that supersedes religion. It is an understanding that says that ALL views of God are the SAME view and that while each religion has its own story of creation and the Nature of God, they ARE yet the SAME; behind ALL the doctrine and the unique beliefs that are attendant to the various religions there IS THE ONE TRUTH OF THE ONE GOD and whether we call him as the Jews as YHWH (Yahwah) or simply as I AM, or as the Christian may call Him as simply the Father, or as Elohim of the Mormons, or as Jehovah of the Jehovah’s Witness, these are ALL the SAME God. These names Christians can understand because these are ALL part of the general fabric of Christianity even though many parts of the church see other parts such as some of these as cults which are considered false. In other religions there are many Names for God as well and in our understanding here from Paul we ARE to KNOW that these ARE ALL the SAME so that if we look at the Father of mainstream Christianity, or Allah of the Islamic Faith, these ARE the SAME as ARE Shiva or Vishnu, depending on the sect, of the Hindu Religion, the Tai Di of Chinese Culture or the Shang T of Confucianism. ALL of these are the various cultural Names of the Supreme Lord, of God, and ALL of them refer to the “God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth” as Paul explains to these Greeks.
Our point here is that we should resist at ALL costs the tendency to see any separation of men based upon their view of God, a view that is largely cultural and the product of education and we should add here that most ALL participants in each of these religions believe that their view IS the correct one and in many cases that their view IS the ONLY one that IS Right and by which a man may be ‘saved’ to use the Christian vernacular. Rightly discerned Paul’s words here tell us that there should be unanimity in our approach to God, a unanimity that is fueled by his words regarding the reality that there CAN ONLY BE ONE because there IS ONLY ONE Creation that we ALL share. Understanding this, we must then try to see that each culture IS different and the teaching given to each culture comes at a different time or point of human evolution and so IS expressed in ways understandable to that society and we can see this clearly in the Old Testament teachings of Jehovah and Moses. Continuing with Paul’s words to the Greeks as we ended yesterday, we repost the dialogue for clarity:
“For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring“(Acts 17:24-28).
The apostle also offers us also a bit of Universal Religion as he speaks about the reason for, or better, the result of, this creation of man from the perspective of the man in the world and we should remember that this man in the world IS who Paul is addressing and his intent IS to offer them his own understanding of God and this regardless of their individual degree of revelation; Paul shares his own revelation. Here we take a moment to recall the words of the Apostle to the Romans that we discuss so often and which tells us:
“For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, 21 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).
Here the apostle gives us the nature of our existence on this Earth as Souls in form (the creature) subjected to the vanity of Life in form (the illusion and the glamour of Life) and that this subjection is “not willingly” but according to the Great and Awesome Plan of God or, as Paul give this “ by reason of him who hath subjected the same“. This IS it, here we are, and here we can take up again Paul’s words to the Greeks that give us our way out which is that “That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him” and it IS by this that we “shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God“. This IS our Truth and this is the Greeks Truth as well as the Hindu, the Muslim, the Buddhist; this IS the Truth for ALL mankind. And it IS of ALL mankind that the apostle speaks when he tells the Greeks that “he be not far from every one of us” and we note that his words ARE “every one of us“; not some of us and not only those who believe as he does…..clearly “every one of us“
Now for us this nearness IS within which we take from the Master’s saying that the “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21) and this of course tells us that if His Kingdom IS within then He must be as well. But this is not the important issue and, as we KNOW from the apostle, this God Within is one of the great mysteries that he IS NOT yet revealing; the same understanding and intent can come from whatsoever we may believe and, as we are told that He IS near, Paul adds some clarification of this for them in another way, perhaps one that is not quite the mystery, as he tells them that “in him we live, and move, and have our being“. Here we can find in Paul’s teaching the Transcendent and the Immanent Nature of God as we reflect upon that other saying regarding the mystery: “Whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God; Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:25-27). In the one saying then we have God Transcendent as “in him we live, and move, and have our being” and in the other we have God Immanent as “Christ in you, the hope of glory” and together we have our understanding of God from the perspective of man.
The apostle DOES NOT however share with these Greeks what he calls “this mystery among the Gentiles” and likely because it is such, he does however speak to them in God terms that they can understand and it IS unfortunate that these words are not readily understood today by many in the church. These words “in him we live, and move, and have our being” are sorely misunderstood by the doctrinal approaches to God as is so much of Paul’s words here to these Greeks. For us this is True on ALL levels of existence; as Souls, the True man, we are part and parcel of the Supreme Lord and as men in the world we live within this Universal Body of God, this Universe. There has ever been much debate in the ideas of the God being within or without His creation and, of course the only creation generally seen and understood is this physical universe in which we find our Life in form and it is in this context that the apostle is speaking although there may be some deeper understanding of Life by these Greek scholars that we are not seeing in this text. This aside, Paul’s words are clear and like the other words in this section of Luke’s writings these can and should be taken literally and, he adds here that this same understanding is held by other Greek philosophers which are included in the word rendered of poets. Some, rather than accepting these words from Paul at face value, see in them the writings of prior Greek poets or philosophers, namely one Aratus, whom some believe that Paul copied but for Paul to copy without agreement would be insincere on his part and this is not a valid argument. From our selection of bible commentaries we find these idea about this most important verse and message which IS NOT out of place with the balance of Paul’s sayings here especially “God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth“.
- The Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible tells us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being–(or, more briefly, “exist”).–This means, not merely, “Without Him we have no life, nor that motion which every inanimate nature displays, nor even existence itself” [MEYER], but that God is the living, immanent Principle of all these in men.
- John Gill in Expostion of the Bible tells us this: For in him we live, and move, and have our being The natural life which men live is from God; and they are supported in it by him; and from him they have all the comforts and blessings of life; and all motions, whether external or internal, of body or of mind, are of God, and none of them are without the concourse of his providence, and strength assistance from him; though the disorder and irregularity of these motions, whereby they become sinful, are of themselves, or of the devil; and their being, and the maintenance of it, and continuance in it, are all owing to the power and providence of God.
- John Wesley 18th century work called Wesley’s Explanatory Notes tells us: In him – Not in ourselves, we live, and move, and have our being – This denotes his necessary, intimate, and most efficacious presence. No words can better express the continual and necessary dependence of all created beings, in their existence and all their operations, on the first and almighty cause, which the truest philosophy as well as divinity teaches. As certain also of your own poets have said – Aratus, whose words these are, was an Athenian, who lived almost three hundred years before this time. They are likewise to be found, with the alteration of one letter only, in the hymn of Cleanthes to Jupiter or the supreme being, one of the purest and finest pieces of natural religion in the whole world of Pagan antiquity.
We should see in these commentaries a varied approach to these words and none goes so far as to accept the literal interpretation and most assuredly they are ALL speaking about the phenomenal form of man in the world and not the True man, the Soul. While we have said that this idea is a Truth on ALL levels it is most True from the perspective of the Soul as it IS this True man that lives in this body; he IS NOT this body but lives within it and it within the world and the world within Solar System and so on. From the perspective of the Soul however there IS NO ‘and so on’ as from this perspective we ARE as He IS and we should try to see how His ONE LIFE encompasses ALL other Spiritual Life and what we see in the varied forms of the Universe are but the activity of this Spiritual Life and behind each and every atom of existence is a spark of Life that has yet to realize the self awareness that we have. There IS NO easy way to phrase this idea of Life and in pondering thoughts such as these we should ever realize that they are no more strange or supernatural than any religious understanding and that there IS NO religious theory of cosmology or existence for which there is True evidence.
The translated text of the hymn of Cleanthes to Jupiter can be found at this link: http://fwnewman.org/Theism/Cleanthes.pdf . There are two markedly different translations.
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!
- * 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.
