ON LOVE; PART DCCXXIX
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
FIRST IS THE GREAT COMMANDMENTS: “The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: 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 12:29-31).
ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ
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.
ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ
PLUS THE EVER IMPORTANT AND HIGH IDEAL TAUGHT TO US BY THE CHRIST: “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Matthew 7:12).
If there IS NO other message here in this fourteenth chapter of the Gospel of John other than the reality of our Unity with God and with the Christ through our measured ability to keep His words, this would be enough, but there IS more; there IS the reality of discipleship and the promise of the Presence of God. It IS however this Unity that IS the greater reality of Life in our view as to understand this IS to keep His words and it IS this evidence of our Love for God that brings His Presence. Long before we began to see the True message of this chapter and the succeeding ones from John’s Gospel, we have been seeing this reality of keeping His words as the Way to the Kingdom of God and the way to the fullness of discipleship and, we have most always combined our view of this with the reality of Love….that Love IS both the beginning and the end our our journey on the Path to His Kingdom. While we are most often seeing Love for God through the prism of our Love for our neighbor, our brother and the stranger who qualifies as both, the Apostle John brings our attention to a place that IS yet beyond this Truth. While we should KNOW that we CAN NOT Love God in the absence of our Love for “one another” as the apostle paints the Master’s intent, and while we understand this idea of Love from Jesus words on the second of the Great Commandments and the Golden Rule which we repeat again at the top of our essay, we find a new depth in this idea of Love here as the reality of the grace of God in the form of His Presence. And, we find new meaning for this sense of Love in the reality of our Unity with God and with Christ.
As we review our thoughts on the ideas presented here in this chapter, we find the reality of the Presence of God in the Life of the man in the world in most every idea that the Master offers us; we find that this Presence IS in His Kingdom, the Father’s House, which He tells the Eleven that He IS preparing them for. While this IS viewed by most doctrine quite differently, that there IS a place for them in a place called heaven and that the Master IS preparing that place, the reality IS found in the right understanding of the Kingdom of God; first that “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21) and second that the “the kingdom of God is come unto you” (Matthew 12:28) or as the Master also frames this “the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15). In these ideas we should see the reality of the Kingdom, that it IS here and now; and, while this may seem to be a new reality in the day that the Master speaks these ideas, the greater Truth IS that in the teaching that He IS offering, the old doctrines and traditions of the Jews are made of NO importance. In this view, it IS unfortunate that the traditions of the Jews and their sense of doctrine have infiltrated the greater Truths of the teaching of the Master.
And we find the Presence of God in the reality of discipleship, the reality of the Life of the man who can see through the illusion and the glamour of worldly Life and focus upon the Kingdom of God. In the Master’s words that tell us that it IS the Father that dwells in Him that does the works and that it IS the Father that dwells in Him that gives Him the words that He speaks, we should see the reality of the Spirit of God and this in the same way that we should see this Spirit operating in the lives of men in this world. Jesus offers us this Truth in the words that He gives us and we must understand the parabolic nature of His speech and the purpose of His way of teaching so that it IS meant for “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear” (Luke 14:35). If we understand the reality of His words that “I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works” (John 1:10) as that this IS the Spirit of God, the Spirit that IS God, then we can understand as well that it IS this same Power that will operate for the man of whom He says: “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do” (John 1:12). Here, while most of doctrines DO NOT accept the reality of this saying and while many attribute these words as speaking ONLY to His apostles, we have a clear and straightforward saying that shows us the same reality that the Apostle Peter cites in his saying that “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust” (2 Peter 1:4). These “great and precious promises” and our part as “partakers of the divine nature” ARE this same idea that the Master presents and which promise can clearly be seen in the picture of the Life of Peter that IS painted for us in the Gospels and the Book of Acts.
And we should NOT see this idea of works as only the miracles and the healing that we read of in the gospels; we should see the broadness of the Love that the Master expresses to ALL men, the essence of His teaching and His example of the Truly spiritual Life. In this view we can come to see the greater ideas that are encompassed in Jesus words that “the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do“….that this IS the work of focus upon God and the fullness of our ability to both understand and perform the Great Commandments of Love for God and Love for men. And this brings us back to the reality of Love; Love for God and God’s Love for us as these are shown in the Master’s words from our current selection from this fourteenth chapter which we repeat again:
“At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world? Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent me. These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. 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 14:20-26).
There IS NO doubt in the intent of His words on Love for Him and we should understand this as Love for God as well. In the understanding that Jesus offers us saying “I am in the Father, and the Father in me“, and in His speaking about the idea of the “the Father that dwelleth in me” being the reality of both His words and His actions in the world, we have the inseparable nature of the man Jesus and the Father. And more so; we also have the reality that Jesus IS the Christ, the expression of the Son of God to the world of men, and that the Father and the Son ARE One as they both abide within the body of the Master. Again, the parabolic nature of the language used prevents any ease of understanding but, in the completeness of His ideas, we should see that in His words “ye in me, and I in you“, the subject CAN NOT be about the body of Jesus in this world and this should help us to understand the nature of the Christ. There IS a reality here that IS missed by most regarding the very nature of God; that “God is spirit” we KNOW and that He abides in the Master we KNOW and, while this IS understood by most according to doctrine, there remains the idea here of the Holy Spirit of God in the Life of Jesus. And there IS also the Life of the Christ, the Soul that animates and motivates the body of Jesus during His time here in this Earth, that Great Soul who then Lives on afterward as we see in the resurrection where the body of Jesus IS NO longer His ONLY form. In the repetition of the Master’s words which Judas questions, we should get the idea that the Christ, that the Inner man that dwells in that body of Jesus, with the Father, will Love and will come unto the man who Loves the Master as Lord through the Chris and the God Within. It IS in the context of these two verses that the idea of we is founded and which we read as “we will come unto him, and make our abode with him“; in this we should see that both are incorporated into the Spirit of God. It IS here that we should try to see the idea behind our view that these ARE Aspects of God and NOT individual ‘persons’ as IS thought by many. They ARE ONE as the Master tells us here and in that other saying that “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30). Here in our selection they ARE ONE; they come into the Life of the disciple as the combined Spirit of God as we see in His saying that “we will come unto him, and make our abode with him“, and this we should understand as the Holy Spirit. And they ARE within each other as we see in the idea that “I am in the Father, and the Father in me” which shows us the totality of their communion, not only with each other but with the reality of the Spirit of God as well….this IS a spiritual enterprise.
While the Trinity IS NOT central to ALL Christian doctrine, the common idea of the Trinity IS purely doctrinal; the determination of the nature of God as Three Persons, Three Distinct Persons to be clearer, IS not found in scripture but IS created by interpretations of the scriptures where these Aspects of God are found. The view of these doctrines of the Trinity can be summed up in this graphic:
And we can define this idea of Trinity according to ancient doctrine as follows:
According to this central mystery of most Christian faiths, there is only one God in three persons: while distinct from one another in their relations of origin (as the Fourth Lateran Council declared, “it is the Father who generates, the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds”) and in their relations with one another, they are stated to be one in all else, co-equal, co-eternal and consubstantial, and “each is God, whole and entire”. Accordingly, the whole work of creation and grace is seen as a single operation common to all three divine persons, in which each shows forth what is proper to him in the Trinity, so that all things are “from the Father”, “through the Son” and “in the Holy Spirit”**.
Much of this IS in accordance with our own views of the Trinity save for the ideas of their being co-equal, co-eternal and consubstantial, and “each is God, whole and entire which ideas are, from our view in this world, unimaginable. The reality of the relationships here ARE that they ARE ONE; there IS but ONE God who can be seen in different ways behind the created Universe. In our view, the Trinity IS real and the Trinity IS eternally part of the very Fabric of God and of Man…not the physical bodies, but the Spiritual realities of both as we have discussed before. In our understanding of the Master’s words here in this chapter we find the idea that they are co-existing in a unique and incomprehensible sense of Oneness; they exist within each other and they ARE, as the Master tells us, One. In this we have the Father and the Son representing God and Christ which IS the Truth of God and His spiritual expression in His Kingdom and, since this IS ALL spiritual, they ARE the Holy Spirit as which acts upon Life itself. That there IS a physical Universe IS an undeniable Truth…it IS here all around us and into the farthest reaches of our own understanding of space. From the perspective then of the man who exists in this created Universe we can try to see that the very fabric of this created Universe IS the outer manifestation of God and, while the Apostle John tells us in the Prologue to his Gospel that this creation IS the work of the Logos, the Word that we understand as Christ, this IS as well the work of the Spirit of God as these ideas ARE inseparable…it IS the work of the Christ and the activity of the Christ in time and space IS the Spirit of God.
While we did not intend this essay to be on the reality of the Trinity of God, this idea IS the natural result of the words of Jesus in this chapter that we have been discussing. In the unique Oneness of the Father and the Son we find the reality of the Spirit of God….the Spirit that IS God, the Spirit which IS that ALL Pervasive Power that IS God. This Power IS the action of God and the delineation of this Power IS only real in regard to our opportunity to understand it; we may see Father, Son and Holy Spirit but these ARE essentially ‘One and the same’ with names that can offer us some idea of the ‘working out’ of the Power and the Plan of God. Here, while we can cite and define these Aspect of the One God, we ARE but bringing the Majesty of the ideas down to a level that can be understood in the minds of men. Saying that God IS Spirit IS meaningless when we DO NOT understand what Spirit IS and saying that it IS the Love of God that IS brought to us in the Christ, the Son of God, is just as meaningless when we DO NOT understand the nature of this Love. And so we ARE left with the human interpretations of these deeply spiritual ideas which some can sense and which few if any can Truly explain. And so it IS with our own feeble attempts to explain the unexplainable and we DO so using words and languages which ARE NOT suitable to the task. The reality of the nature of these Truths IS captured for us in the Master’s own words that say that “I and my Father are one“; that “I am in the Father, and the Father in me” and in His words to us as disciples that we too have a part as He says “ye in me, and I in you” and of He and the Father that “we will come unto him, and make our abode with him“.
When we speak of ourselves as Souls we ARE speaking at the same time as that we ARE Spirit as this IS essentially what we ARE. Spirit however IS the more undefinable Aspect as regards both God and man. Spirit IS, as our chart shows, the Will of God, the IS’ness and the very act of Being and in this we ALL share. The Soul IS a bit closer to our ability to comprehend and so we divide this and see the Soul as the individual consciousness and Life that IS Spirit and who functions in that spiritual state that we call the Kingdom of God. There IS NO division between this sense of Spirit and Soul and there IS NO separation of these in the Father and the Son and, if we can see the idea that Spirit IS the very act of Being, we can perhaps see that the Soul IS that which simply IS. While this may make NO sense to many, there IS much reality and Truth in these ideas which tell us that there IS but ONE Existence comprised of the undefinable and incomprehensible Spirit and the barely comprehensible existence of the Soul that Lives through this body of flesh. The Soul who comes from the Kingdom into this world with the expectation that He “shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21); and this we should try to understand both corporately and individually. For us this IS but barely seeing the reality of the Spirit and Soul which we understand in God as the Father and the Son and it IS the working our of this spiritual essence in the created Universe that IS the greater reality of the Holy Spirit, that Power of the Godhead that brings the grace of God…the revelations and the realizations of divinity, into our waking consciousness as men in this world.
We will continue with our thoughts in the next post.
| Aspect |
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.
We repeat here again a saying that is from the Bhagavad Gita, which goes well with our theme of the God Within, the Soul, which we see as the Christ Within and while this is good in the Christian world and is True based upon our understanding of the Christ as the manifestation of God, we should also see in these words below that it does not matter what these divine ideas are called; that it matters not what we call this Inner Man, that he is the same in ALL, he is the Soul.
Thou carriest within thee a sublime Friend whom thou knowest not. For God dwells in the inner part of every man, but few know how to find Him. The man who sacrifices his desires and his works to the Beings from whom the principles of everything stem, and by whom the Universe was formed, through this sacrifice attains perfection. For one who finds his happiness and joy within himself, and also his wisdom within himself is one with God. And, mark well, the soul which has found God is freed from rebirth and death, from old age and pain, and drinks the water of Immortality.—Bhagavad-Gita
It is difficult to tell just what verses of the Bhagavad Gita the above is from; whether it is a paraphrase or a combination. It is from the book “The Great Initiates” by Édouard Schuré which was originally published in French in 1889 and perhaps it is in the translation of the verses that they become hard to recognize. However, the sheer beauty of the presentation caught my attention and so I share it with you. The Path to the Kingdom is the same no matter what religion one professes.
Let the peace of God rule in your hearts!
- ** Wikipedia contributors. “Trinity.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 14 Sep. 2014
