ON LOVE; PART MLVII
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GoodWill IS Love in Action
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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).
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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. While this IS from an older definition of Charity, which IS rendered in the King James Bible from the same Greek word agape which IS generally rendered as Love, we should amend our own definition here to include the idea that in the reality of Love a man will accord to ALL men ALL things that he would accord to himself and to say that Love IS our thoughts and attitude of the equality of ALL men regardless of their outward nature or appearance…that ALL ARE equally children of Our One God
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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).
In the last essay we discussed the conflict between the ideas that the Master presents regarding “the way, the truth, and the life” and the doctrinal understanding of these words. We tried to highlight the ways of men who claim to KNOW the Truth of Jesus’ more parabolic ideas while they miss the most simple Truths that ARE found in His teachings. It IS upon His words saying that “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) that so much of doctrinal Christianity IS built but the common idea that one MUST see the person of Jesus in this role misses the entirety of His words that ARE intimately tied together and show the singularity of the Father and the Son. Perhaps if we could see how that the Father IS the Transcendent nature of the Godhead that IS brought forward from the Old Testament and see the Son as the Immanent nature of the Godhead….as the Christ Within, we could better understand the purpose of His words.
It IS in Jesus words and in His example of Life that we find the deeper ideas of our own spirituality and we should understand that these deeper ideas DO NOT come to the man whose focus IS NOT upon Him, His words and His example, as the Way. It IS in this focus upon the Godhead that one gains some measure of the Truth and if we can see His idea of Himself in this Light, we can then better understand our own Way. We can then more clearly see how that to strive to keep His words and His example as our own Way results in the revelations and the realizations of Truth; in this Truth IS our freedom from “bondage of corruption” and our WAY into the Truth of Life which the Apostle Paul shows us as “the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:20).
This Way IS clear, this Truth IS revealed and this Life IS lived by the True disciple of the Lord and ALL of this IS through His words. It IS in striving to keep His words that we can have the realizations of the trifecta and it IS to this end that the Master tells us “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). As a man can Truly strive along the Way, which the Apostle Luke frames Jesus’ words for us saying “Strive to enter in at the strait gate” (Luke 13:24), he IS then taking “up his cross“. And it IS when one can see and understand that to DO so IS to “deny himself” that he can then also see the deeper ideas and the working out of the Great Commandments around which ALL thing spiritual revolve.
It IS as one steps upon this Path that the revelations and the realizations of Truth come and it IS this realization of Truth that IS the essence of faith and of believing….this IS that KNOWING by which ALL things become ever clearer. It IS with this idea in mind that we should look at Vincent’s words on how to believe in and believe on the Master and we should remember here that both these ideas ARE translators versions of to believe upon. Vincent tells us that to believe upon the Master IS to: to accept and adopt His precepts and example as binding upon the life 4 which IS the reality of keeping His words….which IS the reality of the Way. It IS these ideas of “the way, the truth, and the life” that can be easily found in the Master’s words of the trifecta which we repeat here again:
- If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free“ (John 8:31-32).
- “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21).
- “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” (John 14:21-24).
In the first part of this trifecta of spiritual reality we have “the way, the truth, and the life” given to us in rather clear terms. Jesus IS the Way and this IS expressed in His words and His example and we access this Way according to His saying that we should “continue in my word“. This IS the Way and this IS the result of one’s following Him as we read above; it IS in the result of continuing as He instructs us that we come to “know the truth“. And it IS in this KNOWING that He shows us the reality of our Life; a Life in which the man who continues and KNOWS IS His True disciple, a Life that IS freed from the “the corruption that is in the world through lust” (2 Peter 1:4). This IS the reality of Life which Jesus shows us in the varied ideas presented by the gospel writers that offer us various versions of: “whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it” (Mark 8:35).
The second part of the trifecta gives us the same ideas regarding “the way, the truth, and the life“. Here we should see the Way as DOING “the will of my Father which is in heaven“. It IS in DOING this, which IS the reality of following the Master whose example IS to DO so, that one will find that Truth which IS “the kingdom of heaven” and, if we can see that being in this Kingdom IS to be in His Presence, we can then see also how that this IS one’s True spiritual Life. Here we should see as well that Jesus IS showing us that the Way IS only found in keeping His words and that ALL who claim to have the Kingdom without at least Truly striving to “doeth the will of my Father” ARE suffering in that deception that the Apostle James shows us saying “be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (James 1:22).
The third part of our trifecta IS perhaps the clearest view of the realities of keeping His words as the Way and we should see here that the very idea of Jesus’ words and His example ARE essentially Him. In this IS the reality that He presents as He refers to Himself in such ideas as to follow Him, to believe in Him and even to Love Him. In this we should try to see the reality of His rhetorical question which DOES NOT ask men to worship Him or to hold His person as “the way, the truth, and the life“….His question IS ONLY in regard to keeping His words and His example. The simplicity of His words saying “why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46) ARE expanded for us in the version of this idea in Matthew’s Gospel. This version of Jesus’ words begins with His words that ARE the second part of our trifecta and then expand to show how that the ONLY approach to God IS in keeping His words.
Jesus words here continue as a rebuke of the ideas of men who believe that they ARE in His will without keeping His words and while His words should resonate through most ALL of doctrinal Christianity, they DO NOT. His words ARE blocked by the illusion and the glamour of men against which the Master spoke vehemently as He tried to show the religious Jews the error of their ways. Most ALL of them DID NOT get His message and this same failure has been True through the centuries….this same failure IS yet True today. We read Jesus’ words saying: “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you” (Matthew 7:21-23).
In both the ideas presented by Luke and those presented by Matthew there IS the same common thread of keeping His words. Matthew expands upon this to show how that men can have such powers and abilities as prophecy, healing and other “wonderful works” without DOING “the will of my Father which is in heaven” and that these ARE for naught. They ARE carnal and useless and ARE among those ideas of eidololatreia and pharmakeia which ARE rendered as idolatry and witchcraft in Paul’s list of “the works of the flesh“. Without the reality of Truly striving to keep His words these ARE but the psychic powers of men. It IS in the Way of keeping His words as we read in the third part of the trifecta that men find the Truth and here, in Jesus’ words, this Truth IS presented as the Presence of God, as the Power and the strength that IS God working through the Life of the man who has Truly found the Way.
It IS this Presence that reveals the Truth and while so many may believe that they have this anointing, it IS ONLY in accord with His words that one Truly DOES. Here then IS the Way and the Truth according to Jesus’ words of the third part of the trifecta and here IS also the deeper idea of the Life. It is when one can KNOW as a certainty that he has the Presence of the Lord in his Life that he Truly has that Life. It IS this Life that IS expressed as “the fruit of the Spirit” and it IS this expression that the Master refers to as He tells us “by their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:20). We should note here that these words immediately precede His words that ARE the second part of our trifecta and the explanatory words that we discuss above. It IS in the illusion and the glamour of Life in this world that men see themselves being in the Will of God according to their own doctrinal approach to the Lord and when we can see that this IS what Jesus IS speaking against, we will have a clearer view of the Truth and a clearer Path to it.
And NO place IS this illusion and glamour more evident than in the common understanding of His most complex idea that “I am the way, the truth, and the life“. No single saying in the New Testament has aroused so much passion as this idea that makes the Christian believe that he stands apart from the world’s Truths and that he alone has access to the Godhead by the simple act of believing in the atoning Power of Jesus death. It IS in this illusion and glamour that men have created the very factions and divisions that ARE the bane of human Life and these divisions DO NOT only cross that line between the Christian and the non-Christian but they also afflict men’s own views based in the denominations and sects that may see the Way differently. Few see these ideas as a most basic problem of humanity and fewer yet see them as the essence of the second group of “the works of the flesh” as these ARE presented by Paul’s words to the Galatians which we read again:
“For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another. This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” (Galatians 5:17-24).
In the doctrinal understanding of these ideas much of the Truth IS lost and this IS compounded by the doctrinal view that men CAN NOT DO anything spiritually in their own strength, an idea that even extends to striving toward a greater measure of His Presence. While these ideas ARE based in such sayings by the Master as “without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5), they ARE purely doctrinal and DO NOT consider the context in which Jesus’ ideas ARE presented. It IS True that spiritually one can DO NO thing without Him but this reference to Him IS in regard to His Presence which He tells us comes to the man “that hath my commandments, and keepeth them“.
The deeper Truths ARE NOT seen and it IS these that the Master alludes to frequently in His parabolic manner of speaking as well as in His straight forward sayings as we have here in the trifecta. It IS in the convenient interpretations of the Master’s words and those of His apostles that so much of the Truth IS lost and it IS these same convenient interpretations that ARE vehemently protected by the glamour of doctrinal authorities who may believe that they ARE right but who ARE suffering through that great affliction of vanity, that affliction of illusion and glamour to which ALL ARE subjected. Paul shows us that this IS the Plan of God saying that “the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same” (Romans 8:20).
This IS the affliction of men and it IS against this that the Way of Repentance, that change of focus from the self to the Lord, leads men to strive to keep His words. It IS in this striving, which IS ONLY done by the individual, that leads to ever greater measure of the Truth; and it IS this Truth, this KNOWING of the Truth, that IS the reality of our spiritual Life. We close again today with the Master’s parable on the Kingdom of God where the reality of striving and measure ARE His not so hidden points; we read the Parable of the Growing Seed:
“So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; And should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come” (Mark 4:26-29).
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.
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 a Quote of the Day that we spent much time with over the course of our essays. In this affirmation we find the Truth of discipleship as we have been ever been expressing and here we can relate our themes of the last few days; “take no thought” for the things of the world and that we approach the Kingdom and discipleship in the nature of the little child, in humbleness, meekness, unashamed in any way and unassuming. The message that this imparts for us today IS that it IS the Soul that is at work in the world of men as it expresses to some degree the purpose, power and the will through Life in this world. These words are from a meditation offered to his students by our Tibetan brother and in which we find greater understanding of the message of the Master. This IS Truly the way of the disciple.
My Soul has purpose, power and will; these three are needed on the Way of Liberation.
My Soul must foster love among the sons of men; this is its major purpose.
I, therefore, will to love and tread the Way of Love. All that hinders and obstructs the showing of the Light must disappear before the purposes of the Soul.
My will is one with the great Will of God;. that Holy Will requires that all men serve. And unto the purposes of the Plan I lend my little will.
Let the peace of God rule in your hearts
- 4 Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
