IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 271

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON GOD; Part LVII

We ended the last post with some words of our own that express some of the many ideas that we can garner from the sayings that we had been dealing with regarding our new interpretation of the Holy Spirit in practical terms as regards the Activity of the Christ Within and therefore the expression of the Christ Within through the personality, as a man’s ability to do “good works” and in his bearing “much fruit“. What we are saying here is that these expressions of the Christ Within through form are the Holy Spirit in action and it is by these that we “glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16); it is by these that the reality of the Master’s saying is understood “Herein is my Father glorified , that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples” (John 15:8). We spent much of our time exploring the True meaning of this sense of glorification and we came away with an understanding that tells us that:

The ability and the responsibility of the Christ and the disciple through the activity of the Christ Within to cause the dignity and worth of the Father to be seen by others and that this sense may become manifest in them and acknowledged as True. In our limited ability to provide adequate definition to this idea, we should try to develop the understanding that in the ideas of dignity and worth there is a sense of the awesome presence of the Father in the world and in the Life of the disciple and it is this that is to be revealed to ALL that it may become manifest in them and acknowledged as True. This is the essence of glorifying God.

Our listing at the end included such things as: If we keep His commandments we abide in His Love; If we keep His commandments we are His disciples; If we keep his words then we Love Him; We keep His commandments because we Love Him; If we abide in God then we Live in Love; If we Love one another then we are His disciples; and If we are His disciples we will bear much fruit. It is here that we begin to day.

We regard the ideas of attaining the Kingdom of God, being His disciple, keeping His words, following Him and being worthy of Him or accounted worthy as all essentially the same thing for in each are the rewards of the others. For example if one has attained His Kingdom then we can know that all of the other ideas are True; the man follows Him and keeps His words and is accounted worthy. This same tone should apply to the ideas and the words in the preceding paragraph as they say the same thing but add in the idea of LOVE which is ever in our thoughts and ideas and this is borne out for us in the saying by the Apostle John: “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him” (1 John 4:16). Here in a single phrase by the apostle is the totality of what we have gleaned from the saying over the last few posts framed for us in Love. We saw from the Master’s words the art of abiding as the branch in the vine and in the end of His sayings we saw how He incorporated Love into the the totality of this art and we should see this in the reality of his other sayings on this.

The Master tells us that “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love” (John 15:10) and also that “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you” (John 15:7) and we should be able to see the intent in these words. If a man keeps His commandments then it is because His words abide in him and he therefore fulfills the Master’s admonition that “If ye love me, keep my commandments” and repeating this idea again says “If a man love me, he will keep my words” (John 14:15, 23). Can we see the tenor of what the Master is saying and how it is so pertinent to discipleship? He tells us that “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed” (John 8:31) which is the objective of it ALL whether a man realizes and understands it or not and it is all intertwined for us by the scriptures and put into such simplicity by John in his saying above that relates ALL of His word and His commandments to the single idea of LOVE and gives us a glimpse of the depth of its meaning by telling us two times that “God is Love”. There is no way around this great Truth on LOVE and we must remember that it is Love that the Master places firmly into the context of the Greatest Commandment(s) and the way to the Kingdom of God.

Speaking to a Jewish scribe who asks the first or the great commandment of the law, the Master replies: “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). From this point we have always added and will here again the rest of our understanding of the relevance and the importance of Love. We say that we should remember always to link to this Greatest Commandment that other saying of the Master that gives to us the practical understanding of how to love one’s self plus the practical instruction on how it is that we CAN Love our neighbour; He tells us: “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Matthew 7:12). Here we add as we always do a practical approach to Love and one that every man, woman and child on the Earth can comprehend and follow:

‘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’

This is the crux of the Master’s teaching on Love although there are many other sayings. “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” and the Golden Rule as it is alternatively worded in Luke’s Gospel: “And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise” (Luke 6:31) are the Spirit of ALL as in these is the Love that IS God and in these is discipleship.

Getting back now to our perspective regarding the ideas that we have put forth regarding man’s “good works” and in his bearing “much fruit” being understood as the Holy Spirit Himself, we will add here that this should be viewed in conjunction with our understanding of Love as it is Love that IS the “good works” and it is Love that IS the “much fruit“. Not that these actions of the Christ Within through the personality are limited in any way by our ideas on Love but rather that Love is at the root of any action of the Christ Within as He and the Christ Principle in the world are One with God and God IS Love. We should understand that our use of the term Christ Principle is intended to convey the essence of the Love of God, the Christ, in the world. The definition of the word for our understanding can be found in the combination of these ideas from Webster’s  Beginning; commencement. [Obs] A source, or origin; that from which anything proceeds; fundamental substance or energy; primordial substance; ultimate element, or cause. An original faculty or endowment. A fundamental truth; a comprehensive law or doctrine, from which others are derived, or on which others are founded; a general truth; an elementary proposition; a maxim; an axiom; a postulate. (Therefore, leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection. Heb. vi. 1.). A settled rule of action; a governing law of conduct; an opinion or belief which exercises a directing influence on the life and behavior; a rule (usually, a right rule) of conduct consistently directing one’s actions;as, a person of no principle¹. This Christ Principle should be in our understanding the Power of the Master which on the plane of the Soul, the essence of the Second Aspect of God. who IS from the beginning and also the historic Christ who never left us 2000 years ago and who promised “I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20). This principle in time and space can be seen more clearly as the Holy Spirit.

From a human perspective these things are difficult to comprehend and even more difficult to understand as we see things as men in form who are rather oblivious to the formless worlds of the Soul and the Spirit as well as the nearer formless worlds, formless from the perspective of man, of the physical energies that we put to use in our lives, emotional energy of which mob rule can be an example and mental energies which allow for the dissemination of world thought. Returning again to the topic at hand we should try to understand the dynamic relationships of all of these terms in Love and be able to also see that, although the Love of God incarnate is the Master, the Christ, that the Power with which He was able to heal the sick, raise the dead, walk on water and the Power that He told us of that can move mountains, is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit IS the activity of the Christ and the Christ Within in the world, He IS the “good works” and He IS the “much fruit” which we bear and He IS rooted and grounded in that Love that IS the Christ and that IS God. Part of the Apostle Paul’s prayer from his epistle to the Ephesians which we have posted several times and have spoken much about contains these words the we will leave off with today.

“That Christ may dwellin your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love”

Ephesian 3:17

We will finish with this and begin our new topic on illusion and glamour and deception in the next post which will begin with a discussion on what has been our Quote of the Day for several days.

Note on the Quote of the Day