IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 257

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON GOD; Part XLIV

 “For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you“

(Matthew 10:20)

“Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come“

(John 16:13)

“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)

(John 16:7)

“And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost“

(John 20:22)

We spent our time yesterday discussing two sayings that are seemingly at odds regarding the Holy Spirit; the one, by the Master tells us that God will give the Holy Ghost to all that ask and the other, by the Apostle John, tells us that the Holy Spirit is not yet given insofar as that time is concerned. The latter is part of the belief of many that the Holy Spirit was not available to mankind until the death and resurrection of the Master while the other suggests that this is not so but that the Holy Spirit was then available to all that ask. We discussed that the idea here of asking is not just the inquiry of a thing but the sincere desire to have it. This we have equated to an understanding of what it is that one is asking for which can only come from focus on the Christ Within and the spiritual Life, heeding the call of the Soul, as did the apostles and this is True whether they realized it or not. We should remember that the latter saying by John is attached to a saying by the Master that we can say today is rather similar to an aligned with the saying by the Master that tells us to ask; the Master tells us “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said , out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38) and the time frame here should not be doubted, that is, we should not think this was for a later time as does John in his comment. We should also be able to see that the idea of believeth on, which we see as to to follow Him and to keep His words, can used in the context in which Luke frames the word the idea by the word ask. 

We noted also how the commentaries tend to deny that the meaning of the His saying that one can ask and receive the Holy Spirit is actually meant as it is stated; some claim that it means to ask for good things as this is how it is translated in the Latin Vulgate and is picked up by the Catholic versions of the bible. We have a vision of the doctrinal bent of the some translators in this instance and likely in others as well. We held also the observation in the last post that much of what has come to us today as teachings from scripture is rooted in the interpretations of men from long ago, the church fathers and the reformers, which brings the source of our understanding back to the early centuries AD and to the 15th and 16th century times of the Reformation with some such as Wycliffe dating back even earlier. We noted also that these men, albeit spiritual and likely among the intelligentsia of their times, were working out their lives in times that we would consider uncivilized on the early end and emotionally driven on the latter end. The evolution of mind slowly crept through the generations of men from around the time of Christ and in this we should realize that the physical, emotional and mental capabilities  of man are in constant flux and are changing in accord with the evolution of our way of living generation after generation. What we have as the capacity to understand and to realize today is much more than our forefathers and in this we should see the reality of leaving off of our insistence on doctrines that have their roots in antiquity. All this being said, we have also the surging forth of a New Age, the Age of Aquarius, which is bringing the race ever closer to that understanding of the Oneness of ALL men and which must per force bring about that era of Love. In our hands lie the keys to tomorrow; if we all do what we can to help to usher in this new era in Love, brotherhood and GoodWill we will be at the same time helping to prepare the world for the Return of the Christ.

Today we bring up a saying by the Apostle Paul from his Epistle to the Romans and this not for what it says but for what is said about it. Note here before we begin that we have posited the idea of the Holy Spirit being the activity of the Christ Within in one’s personality consciousness; that the Christ Within is the Real Man and that His expression in form is the Holy Spirit. Our saying goes thus: “I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart” (Romans 9:1-2). From here we go to Vincent’s comments on conscience and the relation of this to the Holy Spirit. Vincent says:

• He starts out his discussion on Chapter Nine of Romans saying: Luther says: “Who hath not known passion, cross, and travail of death, cannot treat of foreknowledge (election of grace) without injury and inward enmity toward God. Wherefore take heed that thou drink not wine while thou art yet a suckling babe. Each several doctrine hath its own reason ans measure and age.” Now it is unclear the relevance of this saying but this does offer to us some of the possible rational for the context of much of the doctrinal sayings that we wrestle with today.
• Vincent goes on: 1. In Christ. Not by  Christ, as the formula of an oath, Christ being never used by the apostles in such a formula, but God. He goes on from here to give several references to where this idea is used.
• Conscience. See on 1 Peter iii. 16.⁴
• Peter 3:16 tells us: 16. Having a good conscience (sunei>dhsin e]contev ajgaqh>n). The position of the adjective shows that it is used predicatively: having a conscience good or unimpaired. Compare Hebrews 13:18, “We have a good conscience (kalh<n sunei>dhsin).” Sunei>dhsiv, conscience, does not occur in the gospels, unless John 8:1-11 be admitted into the text. Nor is it a word familiar to classical Greek. It is compounded of su>n, together with, and eijde>nai , to know; and its fundamental idea is knowing together with one’s self. Hence it denotes the consciousness which one has within himself of his own conduct as related to moral obligation; which consciousness exercises a judicial function, determining what is right or wrong, approving or condemning, urging to performance or abstinence. Hence it is not merely intellectual consciousness directed at conduct, but moral consciousness contemplating duty, testifying to moral obligation, even where God is not known; and, where there is knowledge of God and acquaintance with him, inspired and directed by that fact. A man cannot be conscious of himself without knowing himself as a moral creature. Cremer accordingly defines the word as “the consciousness man has of himself in his relation to God, manifesting itself in the form of a self-testimony, the result of the action of the spirit in the heart.” And further, “conscience is, essentially, determining of the self-consciousness by the spirit as the essential principle of life. In conscience man stands face to face with himself.” Conscience is, therefore, a law. Thus Bishop Butler: “Conscience does not only offer itself to show us the way we should walk in, but it likewise carries its own authority with it, that it is our natural guide, the guide assigned us by the Author of our nature; it therefore belongs to our condition of being; it is our duty to walk in that path and follow this guide.” And again, “That principle by which we survey, and either approve or disapprove our own heart, temper, and actions, is not only to be considered as what it, in its turn, to have some influence, which may be said of every passion, of the lowest appetites; but likewise as being superior; as from its very nature claiming superiority over all others; insomuch that you cannot form a notion of this faculty, conscience, without taking in judgment, direction, superintendency. This is a constituent part of the idea, that is, of the faculty itself; and to preside and govern, from the very economy and constitution of man, belongs to it. Had it strength as it had right; had it power as it had manifest authority, it would absolutely govern the world” (Sermons II. and III., “On Human Nature”).
• Conscience is a faculty. The mind may “possess reason and distinguish between the true and the false, and yet be incapable of distinguishing between virtue and vice. We are entitled, therefore, to hold that the drawing of moral distinctions is not comprehended in the simple exercise of the reason. The conscience, in short, is a different faculty of the mind from the mere understanding. We must hold it to be simple and unresolvable till we fall in with a successful decomposition of it into its elements. In the absence of any such decomposition we hold that there are no simpler elements in the human mind which will yield us the ideas of the morally good and evil, of moral obligation and guilt, of merit and demerit. Compound and decompound all other ideas as you please, associate them together as you may, they will never give us the ideas referred to, so peculiar and full of meaning, without a faculty implanted in the mind for this very purpose” (McCosh, “Divine Government, Physical and Moral”).
• Conscience is a sentiment: i.e., it contains and implies conscious emotions which arise on the discernment of an object as good or bad. The judgment formed by conscience awakens sensibility. When the judicial faculty pronounces a thing to be lovable, it awakens love. When it pronounces it to be noble or honorable, it awakens respect and admiration. When it pronounces it to be cruel or vile, it awakens disgust and abhorrence.
• In scripture we are to view conscience, as Bishop Ellicott remarks, not in its abstract nature, but in its practical manifestations. Hence it may be weak (1 Corinthians 8:7, 12), unauthoritative, and awakening only the feeblest emotion. It may be evil or defiled (Hebrews 10:22; Titus 1:15), through consciousness of evil practice. It may be seared (1 Timothy 4:2), branded by its own testimony to evil practice, hardened and insensible to the appeal of good. On the other hand, it may be pure (2 Timothy 1:3), unveiled, and giving honest and clear moral testimony. It may be void of offense (Acts 24:16), unconscious of evil intent or act; good, as here, or honorable (Hebrews 13:18). The expression and the idea, in the full Christian sense, are foreign to the Old Testament, where the testimony to the character of moral action and character is born by external revelation rather than by the inward moral consciousness.⁴
• Can we see the point here of the what is working out of the conscience in a man? that his consciousness can be from above or of the Earth. Can we see that good conscience is the working out of the Christ Within as the Holy Spirit and this is true in its faintest appeal to the consciousness of man that is heretofore grounded in the world? Can we see this also as the call of the Soul and can we see the heeding of that call as acknowledging the Good and obeying the voice even though it is likely a less attractive option than what is in the thoughts of the carnal man? 
• Vincent goes on in his discussion on Romans to say: Bearing me witness. Rev., bearing witness with me. See on ch. viii. 16. Concurring with my testimony. Morison remarks that Paul speaks of conscience as if it were something distinct from himself, and he cites Adam Smith’s phrase, “the man withing the breast.”
• Then, on In the Holy Ghost Vincent tells us: So Rev. The concurrent testimony of his declaration and of conscience was “the echo of the voice of God’s Holy Spirit” (Morison).*⁴

Vincent and those he quotes are, in effect, saying that same thing that we are trying to say; that the Holy Spirit is the action of the Christ Within, the Soul, although they do not make that final connection. In the last statement by Vincent using a saying from Morison we see a reality of the working out of the spiritual Life in man. In the minds of so many it is thought that the Holy Spirit is not so much a personal attribute but it is the Spirit of God that directs one to Him; this is the result of doctrine. We should see this as the Master tells us, that the Kingdom of God is within; the Kingdom is within and therefore God, in His Kingdom, is within and, taking this yet further, the Trinity of Aspects of God are within as well. This is not unlike the opinion of many as regards the Christ, that He helps from without or that He comes to Live inside of a man when the man is on the spiritual Path. The second part here has a degree of accuracy but it speaks to the idea of the Historical Christ coming to a man from without and not of the man’s own Soul.

We did not get to our sayings at the beginning again and will try to get through some of these in the next post. We also intended to work into today’s post the Quote of the Day from yesterday as it impacts our understanding of the overall action of the Spirit of God. We will leave this Quote again for today and try to address it in the next post.

Note on the Quote of the Day