IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 87

YES, HE is Talking to YOU! (continued)

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

We have been reviewing and commenting on the three stanzas of the Mantram of Unification which has been our Quote of the Day for the last few days. As we did with the first two stanzas, today we will look at the last stanza of this mantram and its relationship to the teachings of the Christ. It reads: Let vision come and insight. Let the future stand revealed. Let inner union demonstrate and outer cleavages be gone. Let love prevail. Let all men love.

A large part of our message in this series and in most all of our series to date is that the Kingdom of God is here now and that the Kingdom of God is within us. Both of these are direct quotations from the Master; He tells us that: “From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). He tells us also that: “Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). Now this being true and with our primary message being that we should be striving toward entry into the Kingdom by attending to the things of the Spirit, we can see the idea of this first line saying Let vision come and insight as being among those things that will come with the Light that pours into our consciousness from the Soul and from the Kingdom of God. Another way of saying this is that we will get revelation; we should understand that revelation can involve most anything. The next line is Let the future stand revealed and in this we should see much similarity to the prior line as this too is revelation. In this case however it is for seeing the progression of spiritual happenings in the world; we can come to a point where we can sense and see the fruits of our labors and the labors of our brothers as they work out in the world. Compare these to Paul’s spiritual gifts that we discussed in the last post.

The next line, Let inner union demonstrate and outer cleavages be gone says to us that we are asking for that Light of the Soul that demonstrates in our lives when we focus on the Kingdom of God to continue to demonstrate; that we faint not and stay the course. It says too that any and all hindrances to our unity with our brothers, our fellow man, be gone; that we can continue to realize our Oneness with our God and with our brothers. Finally we say Let love prevail. Let all men love; and this needs no explanation; it is the message of the Christ and it is our message to the world. When we realize the Presence of God in our lives through our ardent focus on Him, we can then realize all these things.

Before we continue with our theme, let us shed some additional light on our definitions of Love. The Love that the Christ taught to us, and that we have been trying to understand through the words available to us, is largely lost in the world today. When we say Love all men this is exactly what it means but it seems a concept hard to grasp because of how we define Love. For the world love is, in a sentence, expressed as this from Webster’s: we love whatever gives us pleasure and delight, whether animal or intellectual*. This may not cover all things such as the attraction to the opposite sex and the love found in marriage and family and it should show us that  things that do not fall into our area of pleasure and delight are not going to get any feelings of love from us. For many, the understanding of the word Love must change before we can exhibit the Love that the Christ demands of us. For us, it should be understood that this Christ Love is not based on affection and emotion which is the general idea of Love as the world sees it. Love for us is from the Inner Man, the Soul and  it is a Love founded in that attitude of selflessness which streams forth from within whenever we stop aligning ourselves with the cravings and desires and wants of the world; when we stop looking at ourselves as the center of our little universe and realize that we are but a part of God’s universe and that He is the center.

If we ponder on the ideas given to us by the Apostle Paul which were included in yesterday’s post and we measure what we call Love against that list of the actions of Love, we can get a pretty good idea of where we may stand in Love as the Master teaches it. Forget not that this true spiritual life that streams through our personality consciousness from our Spirit and Soul is the reality of Life founded in righteousness which is shown us through His word. It is only when we are able to move the personality consciousness aside and let the spiritual consciousness replace it that we are truly in His Presence and, until then, we strive. As personalities many say that they Love the Lord Jesus and that they Love God and this is good as it shows some degree of striving. The measure of that Love however is found in His words and in the single phrase: “if a man love me, he will keep my words….” (John 14:23). We should see that if we Love Him and we keep His words that the actions of our Love will be of the kind so carefully put to us by Paul. He tells us clearly that the actions of the spiritual life as found in the ‘gifts’ of the Spirit are worthless and meaningless without Love as the foundation and without Love as the crowning glory as well.

We have been using the Greek Lexicon and Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance plus Webster’s older unabridged dictionaries as our sources for meaning of the words used in the New Testament plus Vincent’s Word Studies to help us with translation differences and comment. We have largely ignored Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of the Bible though I am unsure why except to say that it uses the scripture itself to define the words used and it seems to be written from his particular understanding of scripture. This is true also in the lexicon we use but  to a lesser extent. If we were to review what we have taken from the lexicon and Strong’s we would see that many times their definitions do not come to the level of intent that we place on the words of the Master; the same is true of the ideas we will generally find in Vine’s, however this is not true for the words translated as Love. The purpose bringing this up is to share some additional insights into the use of the Greek words agapao and agape which are translated as Love for the most part and as Charity in places in the King James Version (KJV). Vine’s says of Love: Agape and agapao are used in the NT (a) to describe the attitude of God toward His Son, John 17:26; the human race, generally, John 3:16; Rom 5:8; and to such as believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,  particularly, John 14:21; (b) to convey His will to His children concerning their attitude one toward another, John 13:34, and toward all men 1 Thess. 3:12; 1 Cor 16:14; 2 Pet. 1:7; (c) to express the essential nature of God, 1 John 4:8. Vine’s goes on to say that: ….Love seeks the welfare of all, Rom. 15:2, and works no ill to any, 13:8-10; love seeks opportunity to do good to “all men, and especially toward them that are of the household of faith,” Gal. 6:10. *!!!*

This seems all very clear; according to Vine’s the scripture says exactly what we say with a little slant towards ‘those of the faith’. Looking around the so-called Christian world however, one would not really know this and this is the point of this essay, this series and in many ways this entire blog. The High Ideals of Christianity are in Love. Love toward all men, putting away petty differences, putting away prejudices, putting away a hindrances and obstructions to the free flow of Love to all. This does not require liking anyone or even being friends; it only requires that we respect all others and that we treat them as we would want to be treated by them. This must be true in our interactions with all others and from our own individual action we can foster its spread to all groups, political, religious and social; to each nation and to the group of nations as a whole. We all have seen how fast hatred can spread and we should know that, with the right push, Love can spread even faster.

Continuing our theme on Love is the Fulfilling of the Law we come to a juncture where we have said all that we can say regarding the meaning of Love which is for us: 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; along with the basic idea of the Golden Rule which is do unto others as you would have others do unto you. These two thoughts combined are our key to success in our spiritual endeavor and the true sign of a disciple of the Christ. These are also the natural state of mind for all those who genuinely focus on the things of the Kingdom and on the Christ Within as that focus begins and ends in the renewing of the mind and a conscious attitude of Love. From here we will begin to explore some of the parables and the proverbs spoken by the Master so as to uncover the Love that underlies them. There is no doubt that Jesus loved all and forgave all through His understanding of the nature of a carnally grounded man. The Love that He taught to us brings us out of being grounded in the flesh so as to be, in the words of the Apostle Paul, “rooted and grounded in love“.

We will end today with a prayer that includes the saying above which Paul writes for benefit of those struggling to find their spiritual way at Ephesus; a prayer that we ourselves should use to encourage us and others. It is a prayer that asks those things that we here read and write; that we will so focus on the spiritual life that the power and glory of  the Inner Man, the Soul, will flow through our personality consciousness and change us from men grounded in flesh to men grounded in the Spirit and in Love so to become His true disciple. The prayer:

“For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen“.

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.

The sons of men are one and I am one with them.
I seek to love, not hate;
I seek to serve and not exact due service;
I seek to heal, not hurt.

Let pain bring due reward of light and love.
Let the Soul control the outer form, and life and all events,
And bring to light the love that underlies the happenings of the time.

Let vision come and insight.
Let the future stand revealed.
Let inner union demonstrate and outer cleavages be gone.
Let love prevail.
Let all men love.

Today’s Quote of the Day is called the Mantram of Unification and is part of the Ancient Wisdom as taught by a Master of the Wisdom who is simply called The Tibetan. We have now finished our commentary on this mantram from the perspective of the words of the Master Jesus and we should see through this that in all rightly framed prayers and meditations will fit into the ideas put forth by the Christ. As always, the right understanding of any thought or wisdom is found in the words of the Apostle James when he says “and the wisdom from above, first, indeed, is pure, then peaceable, gentle, easily entreated, full of kindness and good fruits, uncontentious, and unhypocritical” (James 3:17) Young’s Literal Translation.

• *       Websters Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1828 and 1913
• **     New Testament Greek Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
• ***   Strongest Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible – 2001
• **** Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
• *!!!* Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, 1996