IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 247

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON GOD; Part XXXIV

“God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him“

(1 John 4:16)

“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way , the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me“

(John 14:6)

Today we begin with two sayings; the first is one that we have been discussed for several days and of which we have said that: There is no deeper revelation in the entirety of the New Testament than that which the sincere seeker will find in these few words by the apostle. The second is a verse that we have addressed before and to which we gave some preliminary comments in our last post. Tying these together is for us an easy task as they both do say the same thing although from a different perspective. The first speaks of the Father as Love, not as having Love, but as being Love and what would naturally follow is that if Our God IS Love then His children and especially His ONLY BEGOTTEN SON are Love as well. We must remember here that we are not this body and this personality but we are the Spirit and the Soul that gives to this body and this personality its Life and its consciousness. We must remember also that it is this consciousness that persists after the death of the body and, as we have said, wherever it is grounded in the end is likely the state in which it will ‘enjoy’ the afterlife. If our lives are as the Master instructs then we are His disciples and this is the nature of our consciousness. However, if we are ambivalent in our spiritual attitude or if we ignore the spiritual side totally, the afterlife that we will ‘enjoy’ will not be as disciples in His Kingdom but in that general ‘place’ where we will likely maintain this same frame of consciousness.

The long and short of this is that whatever it is that we ARE here in this Life, this same will be carried forward into the afterlife as we have discussed before; each of us, our Souls, will garner the fruits of this existence as well as the seeming failures and it is in the Light of these things that our karmic responsibility is formed. We should remember also that all is not what it seems to be; many are not ready in this lifetime to progress spiritually and in this case there is no failure per se if the man lives according to his own prior karmic responsibility. This is, as you can see, as very broad subject and much of what we say and believe is based purely on our good sense of revelation from our own Souls intermingled with what we find in the scriptures  and the teachings of those Sons of God who have come before us into this world. The message of the Master is clear here however in telling us that we should be His disciples and how to do this and, that when this is done, we can remove ourselves from this cycle of birth and death and be One with Him in His Kingdom. From this High Place we then have the opportunity to continue in this cycle on Earth with the sole purpose of helping our brothers whom we Love, All of them. Contrary to the opinion of many is our opinion which says that short of attaining the Kingdom, being accounted worthy, we are destined to ‘enjoy’ the afterlife based on the state of our consciousness; are we with Him, ambivalent, or are we living Life here as carnal men in this world?

While this has taken us a bit off track it is necessary for us to understand the reality of our being as Souls and Spirits and that in this reality we must know that we are, as is OUR God and the Master, Love. We have said many times that the Christ is the incarnation of the Love of God and to this we should add the fullness of God’s power and God’s Love and it is in this understanding from our first verse above that we must interpret the second. Following this thought we should see here that “God is love; and he (the Christ) that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him” and there should be no doubt that the Master dwelt in the Fullness of the Love of the Father and that He expressed than Love to ALL. This same can be true of us through our focus upon the spiritual life and not the carnal; the Master tells us this saying: “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love”  (John 15:10). Do we see the criteria here? that we keep His commandments. We know the commandments of the Master on Love and we know the saying here as well and this we have rephrased before as:

Live in Love, Live in God

Live in God, God Lives in us

Let us now tie this understanding to our other verse regarding “the way , the truth, and the life” and let us begin this with some comments from Vincent on God is Love. Vincent tells us that: Is love (ajga>ph ejsti.n). See on God is light (1:5), and the truth (1:6); also God is spirit (John 4:24). Spirit and light are expressions of God’s essential nature. Love is the expression of His personality corresponding to His nature. See on love of God (2:5). Truth and love stand related to each other. Loving is the condition of knowing⁴. In his statement here Vincent tells us that Love is an expression of the personality of God but this is not a Truly sensible understanding because we cannot be in any way aware of the personality of our God especially in the way that we understand this word. In many ways, we, the human family, are the expression of God and then, according to Vincent, His personality, and, while there may be Truth in this, it is a Truth that we cannot readily comprehend. The Apostle on the other hand says that God IS Love and not that He has Love or expresses Love; these are very different things and much like we cannot understand personality as it may relate to God based on the human understanding so we cannot comprehend the Love that IS God based upon the common understanding of Love. Vincent does give us something to ponder however in his statement that Loving is the condition of knowing which can give us some real food for thought. Truth can be expressed as the reality that IS and this reality is LOVE.

We have expressed Love in our defining terms that we take from the older versions of Webster’s dictionary and this from a time when the ideas of Charity and Love were much more synonymous than they are now. We should remember that these two words were seen as close enough together that the translators that worked on the King James Bible used them interchangeably regarding the idea of Love. So entwined are these words that we have used in our blog a Webster’s definition of Charity as our definition of Love saying that In a general sense, love, benevolence, good will; that disposition of heart which inclines men to think favorably of their fellow 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 men¹. In this same vein we have used a part of  the Webster’s idea of Love to define our understanding of Love for God which is much different in application than that Love we are to have for others. This Love definition says that we love whatever gives us pleasure and delight, whether animal or intellectual; and if our hearts are right, we love God above all things, as the sum of all excellence and all the attributes which can communicate happiness to intelligent beings. In other words, the christian loves God with the love of complacency in his attributes, the love of benevolence towards the interest of his kingdom, and the love of gratitude for favors received¹. Now the first part of this saying should not be included here but, as it helps to define the rest, we leave it it; the ideas of we love whatever gives us pleasure and delight, whether animal or intellectual is not a clear attribute of the Love of which we speak at all. The Love toward God is however in many ways true of the rest of Webster’s idea; we Love God for what and who He is and as a spiritual person we do Love and respect the nature of His Kingdom and we do Love the way that His creation works out when we understand it and flow with it. The specific words may not be clearly depicting what man’s Love toward God is which likely runs the gamut from feelings and sentiments through to the reality of understanding, that is the reality of KNOWING, the very nature of GOD. The True ideas of our Love toward God and God’s Love toward His children can be seen in the ONENESS of ALL of His creation and it is in this realization that we can find a True comprehension of this Love.

John tells us of God that “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19) and this is of course a statement of fact for us in many ways. It is said that the whole of this creation was made manifest by the Love of God and it is this Love that we know as the Christ and in this understanding we should see that without this Love there would be no creation. Can we see the difficulty in understanding this Love? We, His children, are Spirit and through this same Love are we manifest as the Soul which gives Life and consciousness to our personalities. Echoing in the depths of this consciousness that we get from the Soul is an understanding and a knowledge of this Love that IS God and this KNOWING, while not yet sensed by the man in form, gives rise in Life itself to that reciprocal Love of our God. In his very next breath John tells us this which is of much more importance in each mans journey to the Kingdom: “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen , how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also” (1 John 4:20-21). This saying is ever so clear yet it is among those that we have been discussing over the last several days regarding the narrowness of interpretation by the church which sees a brother only as a fellow Christian. We repeat here what John Gill had to say on an earlier verse in this same chapter: God loves all his creatures as such, nor does he hate any of them, as so considered; and he bears an everlasting, unchangeable, and invariable love to his elect in Christ Jesus; of which an instance is given in the following verses, and is a reason why the saints should love one another; that they might be like their heavenly Father, by whom they are begotten, and of whom they are born, and whose children they are; seeing he is love itself, and in his breast is nothing else but love. So the Shekinah is, by the Cabalistic Jews, called (hbha), “love”.⁸  When we have the choice of how to view a verse such as these in chapter four, why is it that so many choose not the broadest and most inclusive but rather the narrow and separatist? Ponder on this.

We did not get to any depth on our second theme of “the way , the truth, and the life” and there is not time left to cover this properly today. Let us close here then by trying to get an understanding of what Love is not; that is, the Love that we have for our God and the Love that we must have for our fellowman.

• Love is not sentiment: A thought prompted by passion or feeling; a state of mind in view of some subject; feeling toward or respecting some person or thing; disposition prompting to action or expression. Hence, generally, a decision of the mind formed by deliberation or reasoning; thought; opinion; notion; judgment;as, to express one’s sentiments on a subject. A sentence, or passage, considered as the expression of a thought; a maxim; a saying; a toast. Sensibility; feeling; tender susceptibility.¹ A more modern dictionary entry says that: 1 .an attitude toward something; regard; opinion. 2. a mental feeling; emotion: a sentiment of pity. 3. refined or tender emotion; manifestation of the higher or more refined feelings. 4. exhibition or manifestation of feeling or sensibility, or appeal to the tender emotions, in literature, art, or music. 5. a thought influenced by or proceeding from feeling or emotion. 6. the thought or feeling intended to be conveyed by words, acts, or gestures as distinguished from the words, acts, or gestures themselves⁷.
• Love is not affection: The act of affecting or acting upon; the state of being affected. An attribute; a quality or property; a condition; a bodily state; as, figure, weight, etc. , are affections of bodies. The affections of quantity.” Boyle. Bent of mind; a feeling or natural impulse or natural impulse acting upon and swaying the mind; any emotion; as, the benevolent affections, esteem, gratitude, etc. ; the malevolent affections, hatred, envy, etc.; inclination; disposition; propensity; tendency. A settled good will; kind feeling; love; zealous or tender attachment; — often in the pl. Formerly followed by to, but now more generally by for or towards;as, filial, social, or conjugal affections; to have an affection for or towards children. Prejudice; bias. [Obs.]  (Med.) Disease; morbid symptom; malady; as, a pulmonary affection. Dunglison. The lively representation of any emotion. Wotton.  Affectation. [Obs.] Spruce affection.” Shak. Passion; violent emotion. [Obs.]  Syn. — Attachment; passion; tenderness; fondness; kindness; love; good will.¹ Note here the misplaced understanding of affection as love and as good will; misplace that is in our view from a spiritual perspective. Again the modern understanding tells us that: 1. fond attachment, devotion, or love: the affection of a parent for an only child. 2. Often, affections. a. emotion; feeling; sentiment: over and above our reason and affections. b. the emotional realm of love: a place in his affections. 3. Pathology . a disease, or the condition of being diseased; abnormal state of body or mind: a gouty affection. 4. the act of affecting; act of influencing or acting upon. 5. the state of being affected. 6. Philosophy . a contingent, alterable, and accidental state or quality of being. 7. the affective aspect of a mental process. 8. bent or disposition of mind. 9. Obsolete . bias; prejudice⁷. Notice the similarity of some of these terms between sentiment and affection.
• Love is not emotion: A moving of the mind or soul; excitement of the feelings, whether pleasing or painful; disturbance or agitation of mind caused by a specific exciting cause and manifested by some sensible effect on the body¹. Again, the more modern understanding is: 1. an affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness. 2. any of the feelings of joy, sorrow, fear, hate, love, etc. 3. any strong agitation of the feelings actuated by experiencing love, hate, fear, etc., and usually accompanied by certain physiological changes, as increased heartbeat or respiration, and often overt manifestation, as crying or shaking. 4. an instance of this. 5. something that causes such a reaction: the powerful emotion of a great symphony⁷.

These are what Love, in the context of our scriptures, is not; we could go on to define feelings and passion and other like words but we should have a sufficient idea of what Love is not in the above. The Love that we seek to express is not based in the personality as are all of these not’s but it flows through our personality consciousness in the Light of the Soul and it is when we grasp at this True Love that we can Truly say that we are believing on the Master, following Him and keeping His words. We will continue with these thoughts in the next post.

Note on the Quote of the Day