IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 290

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON GOD; Part LXXV

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error. Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.  There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment . He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him, because he first loved us. 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 4:1-21).

We had an abrupt end to the last post due to some server issues at our internet provider and we were fortunate to get the essay posted before they shut down altogether for repair. All seems well today and we will pick up where we left off. We were discussing the first of the verses from our selection in Chapter Four that targets Love specifically and we had laid out our ideas on why we should regard the verse part that says: “Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error” as leading into this next section on Love rather than seeing it as reverting back to the previous thoughts as is the common belief and how this is interpreted by commentators. We also laid out some additional information regarding our view of the way the world has been keeping away from serious consideration of the Love that the Master teaches and we placed the causes for  this phenomenon into the realm of  illusionglamour and deception.  We should remind ourselves frequently of the power of these forces and how their defeat is, in reality, the defeat of Satan as a force in the lives of men. This is of course an individual effort and not one that can be accomplished by one for another and we should remember also that it is only when a man has begun to sense the presence of his own Soul, his Christ Within, in his Life that he will even be cognizant of these forces and the ever difficult struggle to overcome them. None of us should believe that we are immune nor above the forces of illusionglamour and deception and this the Master and His apostles have tried to teach us as aspirants and disciples. Remember His telling us that ‘For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect“‘ (Matthew 24:24). We should not get burdened in this saying by the Master’s words regarding false Christs and false prophets as we can easily place these assumed personages into our own psyche and realize that they can be our own carnal and selfish personalities or those that have an influence over them. Whenever we speak of this transfer of ideas from the words of the Master onto our own selves we should remember the fact of the parabolic teachings of the Christ.

There is a saying that we misused and did so intentionally a while back in our posts and this is one that can give us additional insight here again. This saying is from a popular comic strip that ran nationally from the late 40’s into the 90’s called Pogo; it was used by the writer in a political sense and it is a saying that can be used across a wide variety of human endeavor. It sums up for us the conflict and the duality that we face as we attempt to leave behind the forces of  illusionglamour and deception. This saying is simply “We have met the enemy and he is us“**. Of course for our use we should see this in the personal sense of I have met the enemy and he is me as well. We should here again make use of the sayings of the Apostle James that can help to guide the aspirant and the disciple into a greater and better understanding of discernment when it comes to these ideas of “the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error“. James’ guidelines are clear but like all else in one’s spiritual walk there is still the need to question and question again our motives. James says: “the wisdom that is from above is first pure , then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy” (James 3:17).

Moving on now to our next text, the one that we believe John’s idea of hereby is directed, we find that there is first that general statement speaking to all who may read or hear his comments which is admonishing ALL to “love one another“. The apostle then gives us the the equation on how one is to KNOW “know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error“; He tells us:

  • Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” This is a complex statement and in it is one of the most profound of all the sayings in the New Testament; “God is love“. This is repeated for us again a bit further down in another verse and we will discuss this part there. For now let us look at the other ideas that are presented to us in this verse. First of course is the admonition which is not unlike those of the Master but carries the additional force of being addressed to a more general audience while the Master said these words to His group of disciples and through them to us. This fact of the Master teachings has fed the illusion that this is all that He meant, that we should Love fellow believers,  but this can only be seen by one who does not look at the rest of what the Master says throughout all the gospels. We should see the degree of Love meant by the apostle much in the same way as we see the Love  that is meant by the Master; without boundaries or borders, to ALL our neighbors, friends and enemies alike. The man who thus Loves can be said to be “born of God, and knoweth God” and this saying should not be taken lightly but with the force with which Love is taught to us by the Master. This is the Sprit of Truth, that we Love one another and in this we KNOW God as the Christ Within working through our lives in this world and it is this, and only this, that will free us from the illusionglamour and deception through which man struggles in the world today. This is the plus side of the equation as given by the apostle; there is then the negative which tells us the contrary point of his saying here and his prior saying. John tells us that “He that loveth not knoweth not God” and to this we will match “the spirit of error” which as Vincent showed us yesterday can also be seen as misleading spirits4. Again we must reiterate that the greater source of all that is misleading in one’s Life comes from the man himself, especially the man who is sensing the conflict and the duality by recognizing the Inner Life. Yes this is a function of being in this world and yes it is world thought and world feelings that may push a man toward any particular doctrine, be it social, political or religious, but it is the man individually who is deceived along any of these lines of thought and who thereby plays his part in feeding these back again into the world. This concept functions within the world of the uninformed in ways that so color it that the population at large is grossly unaware and, at the same time, they are also unaware of the way that this illusionglamour and deception function in their lives even to the degree that the average man believes that his perception is normal and right. Can we see here that these ideas are put into a different perspective for the man who is aware, who senses the duality and who is beginning to do as the Master instructs; consciously or not the man will “Strive to enter in at the strait gate” (Luke 13:24) and it is on this Path that he can recognize the force and the power of the things of the world that have heretofore held him in captivity. John paints this all for us as KNOWING as well; to KNOW “the spirit of truth” is to KNOW God and to KNOW God is to Love. To be misled then is to be in error and to NOT Love and to NOT Love is to NOT KNOW God but to be in the grasp of “the spirit of error“. A while back we posted and discussed a saying by the Buddha from the Dhammapada and we post part of it here again as it may have some added meaning in our current discussion: consider the world, A painted chariot for kings, A trap for fools. But he who sees goes free. As the moon slips from behind a cloud And shines, So the master comes out from behind his ignorance And shines. The world is in darkness. How few have eyes to see! How few the birds who escape the net and fly to heaven!5

This next verse is regards a theme that we have already discussed, that of the  “only begotten Son” and this is another of those sayings that helps to feed the separatist church doctrines that so limit the Truth of Christ’s teachings.

  • In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him” This saying begins with a word that is of a similar nature to that which we discuss above and in the last post, hereby, and which we ascribed to its following verse rather than follow the conventional wisdom of it referencing the prior thoughts. The word here in rendered as “in this” and again we must choose what we want these words to reference: the thought above that speaks about the generality of Love and how this Love allows one to KNOW God or, the thoughts in this verse that refer us to the idea of the “only begotten Son” For us this can go in both directions and likely does have some bearing on the prior verse but, intuitive reading would tend to keep this all within the verse. In our understanding the Christ is the manifestation of God and in the world the Christ is also the “only begotten Son” insofar as He is born in this state of Divinity, a state that we as men must develop into. We spent much time on this idea from the Gospel of John  (In the Words of Jesus part 231-237) and we should see in this the same parabolic value that we see in the many sayings by the Master that give us this same idea; that the Christ is the manifestation of God and the Christ Within is the manifestation of God as well. The one is cosmic and addressed in the Prologue of John’s Gospel and the other is personal and is the Inner Spiritual Man that is the Life of the body and its personality in the world. The personal, which we call today the Christ Within, is the same Inner Spiritual Man that lived through the body and the personality of Jesus, this is what the Apostle Paul refers to saying of Jesus “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9). We must add to this our understanding of Life from the words of John who tells us that “as he is , so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17) which saying we will address later in much detail as it comes up in our discussion of this chapter. Can we see how these ideas all work together? Can we see the Christ manifest in man as the Christ Within and can we see the Christ as the “only begotten Son” which we are working to develop in ourselves so that “that we might live through him“. This word that is rendered here as through is a complicated preposition which is generally rendered as through but can also be seen as: by 241, through 88, with 16, for 58, for … sake 472. In the doctrinal bent that is generally put on bible translations this is taken to refer to the person of Jesus insofar as it is “through him“….”that we might live“; however, in our more open understanding, can we see the fulfillment of this in living in this world by the power of the Christ Within, as a True disciple of the Master. Is this not for us the reality of the entire Gospel message of the Master?

Our next saying is one that is very perplexing because of the common ideas of the Master as the vicarious atonement for the sins of the world. This is covered for us here under the word propitiation and it is difficult to get any help in understanding this that is not leaning heavily towards the doctrines of the churches regarding this. This is yet another verse upon which much of the Christian doctrines are founded; not on the part of Love but on the part of “propitiation for our sins” and here again we have a difficult saying to parse.

  • “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins“. This verse carries over to into the following verses and we will have an interesting time tying these all together in the absence of doctrine and dogma. This saying is also intimately tied to a similar one from the Second Chapter of this First Epistle of John which reads thus: “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments“(1 John 2:1-3). Can we see the importance in understanding this single word propitiation?

There is not time in this post to discuss this fully and so we will leave it for the next post. We will however post the Webster’s definition of the word propitious from which propitiation comes so that we can have some working understanding of this idea as an English word:

  • From the 1913 edition: Pro*pi”tious (?)a.[L.propitius, perhaps originally a term of augury meaning, flying forward (pro) or well; cf. Skr.pat to fly, E.petition,feather.] 1.Convenient; auspicious; favorable; kind;as, a propitious season; a propitious breeze. 2. Hence, kind; gracious; merciful; helpful; — said of a person or a divinity. Milton.1
  • From the 1828 edition: PROPI”TIOUS, a. [L.propitius.] Favorable; kind; applied to men.  1. Disposed to be gracious or merciful; ready to forgive sins and bestow blessings; applied to God.  2. Favorable; as a propitious season1.
These then are the defining terms of our target word propitiation:
  • From the 1913 edition: Pro*pi`ti*a”tion (?), n.[L.propitiatio: cf. F.propitiation.] 1.The act of appeasing the wrath and conciliating the favor of an offended person; the act of making propitious. 2.(Theol.)That which propitiates; atonement or atoning sacrifice; specifically, the influence or effects of the death of Christ in appeasing the divine justice, and conciliating the divine favor. He [Jesus Christ] is the propitiation for our sins. 1 John ii. 2 1.
  • From the 1828 edition: PROPITIATION, n. propisia”shon. 1. The act of appeasing wrath and conciliating the favor of an offended person; the act of making propitious.  2. In theology, the atonement or atoning sacrifice offered to God to assuage his wrath and render him propitious to sinners. Christ is the propitiation for the sins of men. Rom.3. 1 John 2 1.

Looking at these definitions of propitious we see the ideas of Convenient; auspicious; favorable; kind; gracious; merciful; helpful. Somehow this has become, under the idea of propitiation, this notion of the atonement or atoning sacrifice according to doctrine while it is also the act of making propitious in secular terms. We will get further into this in the next post.

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.

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven (Matthew 7:21)

It is interesting how so many have lost track of sayings such as this one by the Master in favor of the many illusory ideas that promise to a man salvation for far less effort.

  • 1 Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1828 and 1913
  • 2   New Testament Greek Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
  • 4   Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
  • 5   The Dhammapada Translated by Thomas Byrom
  • ** Wikipedia contributors. “Pogo (comic strip).” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia,  Web. 13 Apr. 2012.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Abundance of the Heart, Born Again, Children of God, Christianity, Forgiveness, Light, Living in the Light, Reincarnation, Sons of God, The Kingdom, The Words of Jesus

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *