IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 272

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON GOD; Part LVIII

We have completed our look at the Holy Spirit as the Third Aspect of God although, like our coverage of the other Two Aspects, we have barely scratched the surface. The Apostle John puts our effort into perspective in his closing comments on his Gospel where he tells us “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written” (John 21:25). We can but imagine the magnitude of thoughts and ideas and Truths that there are that could be written concerning the One God in ALL His attributes and magnificence. Having barely touched the surface on the Holy Spirit we did however come into a fresh and new understanding of Him as the Power of the Christ Within through man and the Power of the Christ, both the Historic Christ and the Christ Principle, in the world. We noted also that the reality of this Power is spiritual and not of the world and that He is the expression of the Christ Within working through the conscious personality of the man in form. To this end we then ascribed but two of the ideas that come from scripture as expressions of the Christ Within, namely “good works” and bearing “much fruit“, and onto these we have hung the banner of the Holy Spirit. We should remember here that this reality is one that involves disciples and those like us who consider ourselves as aspiring disciples of the Master. It is to His disciples that He says:

• “Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you” (John 14:17) which tells us that except a man follow Him and keep His words, he cannot receive and express the Christ Within whose expression is for us the Holy Spirit, “Even the Spirit of truth“.
• “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 14:26). For them in that day the Christ speaks of Himself but how should we see this? As we have said, God is One and these references to the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost are all meaning God. From our perspective we see the Father, the Spirit which we ARE, pouring forth through the Son, the manifest Soul of the man, His Light which the Soul infused personality of man pours forth as the expression of God in the world, the Holy Ghost. We must ever understand the parabolic approach of the Master and the fact that He is talking to men about spiritual things that they have not yet really understood. We must understand that the idea of Comforter is a rendered term that can be better seen as Advocate but that even this understanding is lacking. We had previously put forth Vincent’s comments on this (In the Words of Jesus part 260) and today take his closing sentence to help us elucidate our idea; Vincent says of the Paraclete that The advocate who is to be sent is not different from Christ, but another similar to Himself and this is based upon the various uses of the Greek word in scripture.

Christ is God, the Holy Spirit is God and the Father is God and the only difference should be the perspective from which we look; as the First Cause and as the Spirit of Life and of man we have the Father. As the manifested universe in all its majesty and complexity we have the cohesive Love of God and which IS God that creates ALL in the Son, the Christ; this also is a man’s Soul that creates and holds in its place the form nature of the man. Then we have the Third Aspect the Force and the Power of God in the manifested universe and in the manifested man and it is the expression of this that is the Holy Spirit. The force and power of the man that is not Soul infused to some degree, the man that has not the Light of the Soul shining through his personality, is the force and the power that is in the world of form. It is the force and the power of matter itself on the three levels of physical manifestation and this IS NOT the True man; it is the physical and the emotional and the mental matter that the Soul must overcome by His Light. The Soul is the Life and the Consciousness of the man in form, He is not the form itself and being, for whatever Sacred Reason there may be, enmeshed in this world of form, it is His objective and His destiny to overcome the world and to create in time and space a True disciple of the Christ who will express the Power of God as the Holy Spirit. 

This then is our transition to our new topic, there is the world of Spirit and Soul and there is the manifested world of form and, according to scripture, these are at enmity with each other. It is here, in the world of form, that the ideas of good and evil originate and it is here that the Soul must overcome and we must ever remember and understand that the Soul is the True man and not the form nor any of its attributes or aspects. The Soul only uses the form for its expression of Life and consciousness in the world and does so according to the Great and Awesome Plan of God; the Soul must overcome those things that are of the world. Let us begin by looking at a few scriptures on this enmity from the pens of the apostles:

• “For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8:5-8). Reading this based upon our paragraph above we should come to the conclusion that the apostle is talking about focus insofar as minding “the things of the flesh” versus minding “the things of the Spirit“. For us this should be rather clear and the next sentence gives us some idea of the differences encountered by the consciousness based on that focus. We should understand that the word translated flesh is more than just the body itself by can be seen as human nature, the earthly nature of man apart from divine influence, and therefore prone to sin and opposed to God² as the lexicon puts it. Paul then tells us about this enmity and puts the carnal mind in the place of the man; carnal in this verse is from the same Greek word as flesh, sarx and can be seen to mean the same as we see above from the lexicon and the idea of mind here should be seen as the motivation of the man that is “after the flesh“.
• “For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby” (Ephesians 2:14-16). Here Paul is relating our idea from the paragraph above and from the saying above from Romans to the Christ and thereby to the Christ Within as we can do, by the same Power of Christ, as He did. Like us, Jesus is a man in form subject to the world, but He is of a Special Nature that allowed for the Light of the Christ Within to flow through from His miraculous birth having previously overcome ALL in the world. His Life and His teachings are our guide to this same accomplishment; first in overcoming ALL in the world and then enabling our own future Christ-like Life. Paul is here telling us of these two, the body of flesh and the Christ Within, He made one “having abolished in his flesh the enmity“. We read in other places that the Master was tempted in every way as we are and in this we can see a glimpse of His struggle with the nature of the flesh. Finally we see that Paul is telling us of the Master’s final triumph on the cross, the final victory over the flesh and the temptations thereof. This is a rather simple portrayal of a mysterious and miraculous Life of a Son of God but one which can tell the story to both the enlightened and the unenlightened. We should remember here the Master’s teachings to us on the cost of discipleship and the need for each of us to bear his own cross.
• “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4). Do we see the point of this? Speaking to men as men James is telling them of their choice of focus; on God or on the world. This is the same message as by Paul albeit in a more straightforward and simple manner.

The sayings of the Master are generally one pointed, that is that they are addressed to the consciousness of the man, be he a carnal man or a disciple, and He speaks differently to each but in much the same terms. He tells us to let that Higher part flow through the lower part and in His parabolic way He tells us to let the Christ Within Live through the consciousness of the man. He speaks to all men as the reality that they are, Spirit and Soul, except when He is speaking out against hypocrisy, against the lower attempting to play the part of the Higher, as we see in His dialogues with the scribes and the Pharisees and others that are outwardly against Him.  He tells us of the nature of the Spiritual Life, Life in the Kingdom and as disciples and He alludes for us to the nature of the carnal life, a wasted Life that bears no fruit, and He instructs and encourages ALL to focus upon the Kingdom and upon the Christ. The apostles take quite a different tact and speak openly about the duality while speaking to most as carnal men and only to directed persons as though they are Spirit and Soul. This is what we see above.

Our point here is simple and that is that the teachings of the Master are to ALL men and common to ALL while the teachings of the apostles are rather directed to specific audiences and they treat most of them as men in form looking for the Spirit. This should be understood as the reality that it is; there is no teacher like the Master and no one so capable of causing the man that is seeking to be able to find. The idea that we are presenting here is that there are two natures the Spirit/Soul/Kingdom nature and the worldly nature. The Spirit and Soul, those Aspects that are the True man, work out in the world as the Holy Spirit and here we have the Trinity. The world is not the opposite as much as it is the field in which the Spirit and the Soul accomplish that Christ-like feat of overcoming; the world has its own nature in the dullness of matter, physical, emotional and mental, which gives to the carnal personality a sense of comfort that is not comfort at all but rather an existence in time and space that tends to draw ALL deeper and deeper into its control. The world, as man can see and experience it, is motivated by much of the opposite of the virtues of spiritual Life, the fruits of the Spirit if you will, while the Spirit is motivated by the Love that IS God and the Christ Within. We will expand upon these ideas as we progress through this topic.

Affiliated with the world and the carnal nature is Satan and the devil which are largely overplayed in the doctrines and the dogmas of the churches and which are to be seen more as the nature of the threefold world of form that as the personalities that they are made to be by the church. Can these take on personality, most definitely, but not as individuals of any greater spiritual ability than any other; that is that the forces of the world are taken on by the personality that is grounded in the world and so focused on the world that they know of nothing else or they deny its existence. In closing today let us look at some definitions of these two words for that great power of darkness to whom many a Christian gives a the identity of a personality that stands against them.

• From Vincent:

•  Satan. A transcription of the Hebrew word, derived from a verb to lie in wait or oppose. Hence an adversary. In this sense, of David, 1 Samuel 29:4, and of the angel who met Balaam, Numbers 22:22. Compare Zechariah 3:1, 2; Job 1, 2. Dia>bolov, devil, is the more common term in the New Testament. In Revelation 12:9, both terms are applied to him⁴. 
• The Devil (tou~ diabo>lou). The word means calumniator, slanderer. It is sometimes applied to men, as to Judas (John 6:70); in 1 Timothy 3:11 (slanderers); and in 2 Timothy 3:3, and Titus 2:3 (false accusers). In such cases never with the article. The Devil, Satan, the God of this world (oJ dia>bolov), is always with the article and never plural. This should be distinguished from another word, also wrongly rendered devil in the A.V. — dai>mwn, and its more common neuter form diamo>nion, both of which should be translated demon, meaning the unclean spirits which possessed men, and were cast out by Christ and his apostles. The Rev., unfortunately, and against the protest of the American revisers, retains devil for both words, except in Acts 17:18, where it renders as A.V. gods.⁴

• Satan <1,,4567,satanas> a Greek form derived from the Aramaic (Heb., Satan), “an adversary,” is used (a) of an angel of Jehovah in Num. 22:22 (the first occurrence of the Word in the OT); (b) of men, e.g., 1 Sam. 29:4; Ps. 38:20; 71:13; four in Ps. 109; (c) of “Satan,” the Devil, some seventeen or eighteen times in the OT; in Zech. 3:1, where the name receives its interpretation, “to be (his) adversary,” RV (see marg.; AV, “to resist him”). In the NT the word is always used of “Satan,” the adversary (a) of God and Christ, e.g., Matt. 4:10; 12:26; Mark 1:13; 3:23,26; 4:15; Luke 4:8 (in some mss.); 11:18; 22:3; John 13:27; (b) of His people, e.g., Luke 22:31; Acts 5:3; Rom. 16:20; 1 Cor. 5:5; 7:5; 2 Cor. 2:11; 11:14; 12:7; 1 Thess. 2:18; 1 Tim. 1:20; 5:15; Rev. 2:9,13 (twice),24; 3:9; (c) of mankind, Luke 13:16; Acts 26:18; 2 Thess. 2:9; Rev. 12:9; 20:7. His doom, sealed at the Cross is foretold in its stages in Luke 10:18; Rev. 20:2,10. Believers are assured of victory over him, Rom. 16:20. The appellation was given by the Lord to Peter, as a “Satan-like” man, on the occasion when he endeavored to dissuade Him from death, Matt. 16:23; Mark 8:33. “Satan” is not simply the personification of evil influences in the heart, for he tempted Christ, in whose heart no evil thought could ever have arisen (John 14:30, 2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 4:15); moreover his personality is asserted in both the OT and the NT, and especially in the latter, whereas if the OT language was intended to be figurative, the NT would have made this evident. See DEVIL⁶.
• Devil, Devlish <1,,1228,diabolos> “an accuser, a slanderer” (from diaballo, “to accuse, to malign”), is one of the names of Satan. From it the English word “Devil” is derived, and should be applied only to Satan, as a proper name. Daimon, “a demon,” is frequently, but wrongly, translated “devil;” it should always be translated “demon,” as in the RV margin. There is one “Devil,” there are many demons. Being the malignant enemy of God and man, he accuses man to God, Job 1:6-11; 2:1-5; Rev. 12:9,10, and God to man, Gen. 3. He afflicts men with physical sufferings, Acts 10:38. Being himself sinful, 1 John 3:8, he instigated man to sin, Gen. 3, and tempts man to do evil, Eph. 4:27; 6:11, encouraging him thereto by deception, Eph. 2:2. Death having been brought into the world by sin, the “Devil” had the power of death, but Christ through His own death, has triumphed over him, and will bring him to nought, Heb. 2:14; his power over death is intimated in his struggle with Michael over the body of Moses. Jude 1:9. Judas, who gave himself over to the “Devil,” was so identified with him, that the Lord described him as such, John 6:70 (see John 13:2). As the “Devil” raised himself in pride against God and fell under condemnation, so believers are warned against similar sin, 1 Tim. 3:6; for them he lays snares, ver. 7, seeking to devour them as a roaring lion, 1 Pet. 5:8; those who fall into his snare may be recovered therefrom unto the will of God, 2 Tim. 2:26, “having been taken captive by him (i.e., by the ‘Devil’);” “by the Lord’s servant” is an alternative, which some regard as confirmed by the use of zogreo (“to catch alive”) in Luke 5:10; but the general use is that of taking captive in the usual way. If believers resist he will flee from them, Jas. 4:7. His fury and malignity will be especially exercised at the end of the present age, Rev. 12:12. His doom is the lake of fire, Matt. 25:41; Rev. 20:10. The noun is applied to slanderers, false accusers, 1 Tim. 3:11; 2 Tim. 3:3; Titus 2:3⁶.

• Satan: adversary (one who opposes another in purpose or act), the name given to the prince of evil spirits, the inveterate adversary of God and Christ; he incites apostasy from God and to sin circumventing men by his wiles; the worshippers of idols are said to be under his control; by his demons he is able to take possession of men and inflict them with diseases; by God’s assistance he is overcome; on Christ’s return from heaven he will be bound with chains for a thousand years, but when the thousand years are finished he will walk the earth in yet greater power, but shortly after will be given over to eternal punishment; a Satan-like man².
• Devil: prone to slander, slanderous, accusing falsely a calumniator, false accuser, slanderer, metaph. applied to a man who, by opposing the cause of God, may be said to act the part of the devil or to side with him².

From these we should be able to see the role of Christian doctrine and dogma in the current Christian beliefs today regarding Satan ans the devil. We will continue with these thoughts in the next post as well as get to the Quote of the Day which we have been carrying now for several days. Read it again as it is our introduction into the ways of the world and the true nature of Satan and the devil.

Note on the Quote of the Day