IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 140

YES, HE is Talking to YOU! (continued)

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

Today we will begin with our look at the prayer of the Apostle Paul that appears below as the Quote of the Day so that we will have the time and space for it. First, this is a prayer that is to and for the Gentiles at Ephesus or, as some believe, to the Gentiles in general, the purpose of which is to secure and succor them in the Faith, the new Christian Faith that has come upon them. Praying to the Father God he says:

• For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: the words of our Lord Jesus Christ should be omitted as they are in most other versions but, as some say, it is a truthful statement and should remain. We should think that so long as it does not affect our understanding of the rest of the prayer, it is a way of looking at our own relationship to the Master.
• Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named: rightly after whom every family is named. This should be understood as every being in all creation of whom God is the Father with no boundaries as to race or religion or beliefs of any sort. Vincent tells us that in heaven and earth should be taken to mean: to the angelic hosts and the tribes of men alike, God is Father⁴ . To those that this letter is written and to us as well, Paul is passing on the understanding that all are the children of the One Father God. This is to whom the Apostle prays.
• That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man: Vincent tells us that the Revised Version translates this as power in place of might since it signifies faculty or virtue not necessarily manifest⁴ and we should adopt this as well. This brings us to the inner man of which we speak often. This has been for us the Soul, the Inner Man, the Christ Within and this should also be seen in this reference by Paul. Looking at this as the man in form, the personality, we should see be strengthened with Power by His Spirit, of which our Spirit is part and parcel, and which is the Life of the Inner Man. In the context of what we have posited regarding the constitution of man, this saying by Paul agrees. The Spirit, the Life that IS, is our true self and part and parcel of God which manifests through the medium of the Christ Within, the Soul, which in turn is that manifestation of Life that lives through the conscious personality in form on Earth. This is understandably difficult to grasp and is not intended to be a complete picture of Life but it is a close resemblance that follows along with the thoughts of Paul.

The picture so far should be one that gives some Christian perspective to what it is that we have been reading and writing here in this blog. It outlines the natural order of things from a spiritual perspective down to the perspective of the man in form. The Spirit power in the Inner Man strengthening the conscious man in form and prompting him to focus more and more on the spiritual life.

Continuing now with our discussion on Faith and Hope. We ended yesterday with an understanding of the differences between these two virtues of man. Let us look at this from another perspective; as a virtue Hope is the expectation of spiritual things in one’s life. To take Hope away from the spiritual perspective is to render it wishing; regardless of what we may Hope for, without the spiritual aspect of Faith there is no trust to be found as there is nothing to base this trust on. Now there is a physical plane trust, a conscious personality trust, as we noted yesterday regarding the airplane; this however is not Hope. Physical plane trust is based on facts and knowledge or general understanding; this can also be seen as physical plane faith. So in physical things we can see that faith and trust can be allied but hope is relegated to wishfulness. On the spiritual side Hope is expectation based on Faith. The greater the Faith the greater the Hope and the greater the trust that what we expect will happen. Faith is the spiritual fuel that energizes Hope. Hope is a conscious application of Faith in one’s life; Hope can range in effect from the expectation of some thing can occur, to trust that a thing will occur, to KNOWING, without doubt, that it will happen. All of this is in direct proportion to the Presence of God in one’s life. Faith is an inherent Soul quality, it is KNOWING God which, as a Soul, we do; the goal is to bring this Soul quality into play in our conscious lives here and now and with this Soul quality, all of the other Soul qualities which can be seen as the fruit of the Spirit.

This may seem more complicated than it needs to be but it is important to understand the idea of Faith as the Master teaches it and not as it is used in the church or the world today. This brings us to the next word which is believe or believing. This is related in some way to all of the above, to Faith, to Hope, to Trust, to expectation and even to KNOWING; it is the functional effect of them all and it is a much confused word as it relates to all these other words. We cannot talk about nor understand the idea of believing without knowing to which of these words a particular belief is related. Making it more complex is the addition of physical plane believing which takes it away from the words above and from the spiritual ideas of believing as noted in scripture. Let us start with an understanding of the word itself. First we should see that the Greek word translated as believe (pisteuo) and believing (pistos) is much the same as the Greek word translated as Faith (pistis); the noun version of believe in Greek is the same word as that generally translated as Faith (pistis) and this all creates a strong affiliation between the English ideas of Faith and of believing. Add to this the relationship between Faith and Hope and we can see more clearly the interwoven complexity of this all.

We could relegate believing to a cognitive approach to Hope and Faith but this would not paint for us the entire picture although the idea of believing is a function that is predominately associated with one’s conscious personality. It is a physical plane acceptance of Faith and can be seen on this plane as a reason for trust. Compounding this all the more is the usage of the words believe and believing as not only a cognitive and emotional function but also as an evocation of action on the part of the believer. The Gospel of John paints the picture of believing as an action which we will discuss a bit later.

Simply stated, if we have Faith we do believe and we believe in the same measure as the Faith that we are using. Remembering that Faith is exhibited as trust and seeing here that Faith is manifest in believing we should have a clearer picture of the scriptural idea of all three. We said above that Faith is the spiritual fuel that energizes Hope. Hope is a conscious application of Faith in one’s life; Hope can range in effect from the expectation of some thing can occur to trust that a thing will occur to KNOWING, without doubt, that it will happen. This graduated effect of Faith is the range of believing that we can experience and likewise, the range of trust. Away from the spiritual aspect then we should see that hope is no longer believing. Relying only on our cognitive and emotional response and without any spiritual impetus, hope is wishful, trust is relegated to that which we know to be and believing is a choice we make based on our knowledge and feelings. We trust the airplane because we know it can fly; we believe that someone will help us because either we think this way based on past experience or we have a good ‘feeling’ about this person. There is little or no spiritual interplay in this.

Our saying from Hebrews that  “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1)  should be understood on a spiritual level alone; it has to do with spiritual things and not Earthly. The Young’s Literal Translation (YLT) puts it this way: “And faith is of things hoped for a confidence, of matters not seen a conviction” and from this we should see this somewhat clearer. Hope(or prayer) for Wisdom or Peace or Understanding or any of the fruit of the Spirit results in that Trust (confidence) and that KNOWING (conviction) that are Faith and, of course, these are things unseen. Paul gives us some more help in understanding this in his saying that: “For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?” (Romans 8:24). Now this is a much more complex saying by Paul than we can cover here; for us now we will use only his words on the nature of Hope as it relates to the saying from Hebrews and paints for us the better picture of Hope as the unseen and the spiritual.

Again, there is physical plane hope and there can be the unseen in this as well. We can hope, or wish, for the big house or the car and we can picture it, it does not exist, but this is not the subject of the Apostles of our Faith. In the words of the Master “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing” (John 6:63) and knowing this we should understand that the teaching to us is not concerned with the things of the flesh.

Continuing with the idea of believing we should see that the right working out of belief is based on things spiritual and on things not seen and that it is the working out 0n the physical plane of the Faith that we have and, as such, is much the same as trust. We listed the definitions of the words Faith and Hope in yesterdays post, let us look today at believe; the word translated as both believe and believing is the Greek word pisteuo of which the lexicon says: to think to be true, to be persuaded of, to credit, place confidence in, of the thing believed, to credit, have confidence; in a moral or religious reference, used in the NT of the conviction and trust to which a man is impelled by a certain inner and higher prerogative and law of soul, to trust in Jesus or God as able to aid either in obtaining or in doing something: saving faith 1bc) mere acknowledgment of some fact or event: intellectual faith; to entrust a thing to one, i.e. his fidelity; to be intrusted with a thing². We see here the words used to define believe are the same as in the YLT usage of conviction and of confidence as they were used to define Faith.

Webster’s gives us this on believe:  To exercise belief in; to credit upon the authority or testimony of another; to be persuaded of the truth of, upon evidence furnished by reasons, arguments, and deductions of the mind, or by circumstances other than personal knowledge; to regard or accept as true; to place confidence in; to think; to consider; as, to believe a person, a statement, or a doctrine. Syn. — See Expect. To have a firm persuasion, esp. of the truths of religion; to have a persuasion approaching to certainty; to exercise belief or faith. To think; to suppose¹. The dictionary definitions here do not give us the same message as we are getting from the sayings of scripture nor from the lexicon. They are portrayals of the idea of believing in the physical consciousness alone and away from Faith and can be seen much the same as we have discussed above. Noting the definitions from yesterday and today, we should be able to understand the level of confusion regarding the ideas presented by Hope, Faith, and believing.

We do get some help here from Vincent however who paints for us a spiritual picture of believing and also divulges to us the unique aspects of this word as it is used in the Gospel of John. We should remember also what we have previously said about believing (In the Words of Jesus part 60), which addressed the definitions above and said of them that: Let us rearrange these word to fit the general and the specific message of the Master. Our work is to believe on Him that was sent by God to show us the way to the Kingdom of God. In this belief we have conviction and trust in the Master and what He says; we have firm persuasion that His way is the way and, focused on Him whom we trust, we turn away from the world of men and follow the path of the Christ; the path that He just told us leads to life everlasting. So we have here the active act of believing and this is the work of God because in following the One whom we trust we do as He says to do. We should see that this is not merely an act of believing that He is the Christ; it is an active belief that carries with it all the same criteria that we discussed in previous posts concerning attaining to the Kingdom of God. In short, to have the proper understanding of this idea that “this is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent” we need to look at the entirety of Jesus’ sayings. No one verse or saying should be ever taken out of the context of the whole of His teaching. To truly believe, to truly have faith, to be a Son of God to be in the Kingdom is all the same. If we believe, we follow and we are sons; if we believe, we do His works we are striving toward the strait gate; if we believe and we follow then He is truly our Shepherd. We seek what He seeks, we do what He would have us do and in this all we shall be in His Presence.

Vincent says  of believe in this regard: ….at other times with a preposition into which is rendered believe in, or believe on….To believe in, or on, is more than mere acceptance of a statement. It is so to accept a statement or a person as to rest upon them, to trust them practically; to draw upon and avail one’s self of all that is offered to him in them. Hence to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ is not merely to believe the facts of His historic life or of His saving energy as facts, but to accept Him as Saviour, Teacher, Sympathizer, Judge; to rest the soul upon Him for present and future salvation, and to accept and adopt His precepts and example as binding upon the life⁴.

This is believing in and believing on the Master and it is the practical use of our Faith. We will try to summarize all this from the last few posts in the next one so we can get back to the sayings  and parables of the Master.

Note on the Quote of the Day