IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 403

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON GOD; Part CLXXXIV

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GoodWill IS Love in Action

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“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. 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. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Romans 8:1-13).

We made it back to our discussion of the words that Paul writes to the Romans that we have been posting above and we should remind us that while these words above precede those on which we had a  long discussion, verses fourteen to twenty-three, they are at the same time better understood based upon our understanding of the latter. That is that within the next group of verses (14-23) there is the insight to understand the Apostle Paul’s perspective which we see in the first thirteen verses above. Without the understanding afforded us by the later verses we do not have the foundation to understand the reality of the apostle’s message regarding the opposition in man of the mind of the spirit versus the mind of the flesh. This foundation is given to us in the understanding of the reality of the Soul as it is incarnated into the creature, becoming that creature for a time, and that “the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope” which we understand to say that the incarnated Soul is plunged into this world of vanity, of illusion and glamour, and, this not of his own accord but by the Plan of God. At the same time the creature is “subjected….in hope” that “the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:20-21) and it is in these words by the apostle that we can see the reality of Life in form; not the reasons for it which, while hinted at later, are a part of the mysteries of the Kingdom and of Life which Paul speaks much about in his writings.

That there are mysteries is a fact given by the Master as regarding the Kingdom of God of which He tells us that “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). Despite His words the Christian world rather ignores what Jesus does say and then assumes that they know of the mysteries based upon Jewish myth and their own assembly of isolated and unrelated verses in the gospels and the writings of the apostles. The Master say that “Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given” (Matthew 13:11) and these words He says to His disciples and unless one believes that he has reached the High Calling whose requirements are given rather clearly, a man has no reason to believe then that he can understand these mysteries. And, if a man could perceive these “things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 13:35), he would not be found giving them out indiscriminately as though they were common knowledge but would take care to guard them. This is a strong statement that may run counter to our own declarations of Life and the Kingdom in these essays and to that we would answer that those things that we do try to explain are things that are important in this time of greater understanding by most ALL men and that our words are written in a way that except a man may find it in himself to subscribe to what we say as a Truth or as a reasonable possibility, that he would not likely be able to understand or accept our words at all. There is a reality to Life that is clouded over by the fog of illusion and of glamour and this fog is enhanced by the misrepresentations of much of the doctrines that are still today based largely on the writings of the early founders of the chruches who tried to put the teachings into a form that they could present authoritatively to the people who inhabited the Earth more than 2000 years ago. We are not these people in the Earth and in this last 2000 years humankind has unraveled many of the mysteries of this physical world in which we live and perhaps the mysteries of the more subtle levels of existence can be uncovered as well if we could, as a people, understand the reality of the existence of these undiscovered inner worlds.

Moving on in our discussion of the verses above, we come to Paul’s next statement which tells us of the relationship between rhe carnal mind, that which is “made subject to vanity“, and the world, the carnal world itself. He says: “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” Now this word carnal should be understood as it is of the flesh which is a broad statement that we should see as covering the body of flesh and the personality which includes the mind. Of the word flesh, as this is the translation of the same idea as used by the Master, we should get the same understanding so that our picture would be the body nature including the personality individually and the world of men as well. Again we have here a saying that is better understood by KNOWING what the apostle later says about being “made subject to vanity” for in this we see the idea of its being “not subject to the law of God” and in our greater understanding, we KNOW too that this IS by the Plan of God. The Apostle James give us this same idea in saying “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) and this idea we have recently covered in a similar but more personal context in In the Words of Jesus parts 389-390. Here in Paul’s words is the plight of those who have not yet sensed the call of the Soul and have not yet realized the duality; they are in the world and they attend to the world and these are not subject to what the apostle refers to earlier as “the righteousness of the law“. Here are also those who did hear and did sense the duality but have chosen to stay in the world being deluded by the vanity, the illusion and the glamour.

Paul’s next thoughts confirm what it is that he and we say above which is in his words: “So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God” and this means basically what it says. We would add here that to be in the flesh is to be carnally minded and to be focused in Life upon the world of things instead of upon the things of God and that in the idea of please we should note that this word is but an unsuccessful attempt to translate a difficult Greek word. In reference to God this Greek word aresko cannot imply those ideas we find in the dictionary saying: To give pleasure to; to excite agreeable sensations or emotions in; to make glad; to gratify; to content; to satisfy¹;as  these ideas suppose that Our God has an emotional nature as does the man in form and there is no support for this idea at all in the New Testament. Our understanding here should be more in line with this from the lexicon which tells us that aresko means to accommodate one’s self to the opinions desires and interests of others² and we can see here the greater realities of keeping His words as these would comprise the opinions desires and interests of God. Vine’s adds here for us that the word aresko  should be considered in the idea of  to render service⁶.

The apostle goes on here to his next confirming thought that tells us that “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you“. Here Paul is segregating his readers from the rest, “they that are in the flesh” but with the disclaimer that if this would not be True except the Spirit dwell in you and this is the criteria still today. We have always said that the Spirit of God is for us the Inner Man living through form. The Spirit IS the Christ Within or the God Within, which is the Inner and the True man and that gives Life and consciousness to this carnal Life in form that we have on Earth. In this Light then, what does Paul mean for us to understand? By adding together the thoughts that he has given to us we should be able to see that the Spirit of God dwells in a man:

• Who does “walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit“
• The apostle repeats this same again saying in another verse that “That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit“.
• Paul then tells us that the focus of the man that is “after the Spirit” is on “the things of the Spirit“

In all of this the apostle is painting for us a picture of the man in whom the Spirit of God dwells and we should see that the whole of this is the realization of this and not some magical thing as some may expect. If a man’s focus, his attention, if his mind is on the things of the Spirit then he is realizing that Spirit within and Paul is framing this in such a way as to show the idea of dwelling as the Master paints it for us saying in His words. Of the Holy Spirit which we see as the activity of the Christ Within in form:

• Of the Holy Spirit which we see as the activity of the Christ Within in form 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). The key to this idea for us is that this realization which the Master covers by the word seeth, is this same realization as we see in Paul’s saying and we should note too that the Master is clear in saying that He “dwelleth with you” without qualification.
• This is yet clearer in the Master’s teaching of the Father saying: “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works” (John 14:10). As we say above the idea of the Christ Within and the God Within ARE the same and the Master of course uses the idea of the Father because the thought of the Christ Within is not yet established. This is again the singularity of Life; the Spirit, the Soul and the Life and consciousness of the Soul in form, are EVER ONE just as the Trinity is ONE.
• Last we point to God as the Supreme being under this idea of dwelleth and read in Matthew’s Gospel that “And whoso shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and by him that dwelleth therein. And he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon” (Matthew 23:21-22) and these are words that have been sorely misunderstood as God is no more in a temple or a church than He is anywhere else in His Creation and we need remember that our understanding of the God Within is that as Spirit one is part and parcel of God. God pervades ALL and that pervasion that we call the Spirit of man is a conscious and individualized fragment of the Whole.

We can say that God dwells in us as a way to make sense of the complexity of the ideas regarding the God Within along with the Kingdom Within and the thoughts that Paul later gives us of the Christ Within. All this is to say that God is not only in a man as his reality, his Spirit, but that God is ACTIVELY in a man because the man is attending to the things of God and not the things of the flesh. This begins with that realization of the Soul’s presence and the duality that this realization brings to a man.

The apostle continues with the next thought saying “Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness” and in this we see the introduction of the Spirit of Christ in Paul’s writing. This Spirit of Christ must be seen as the same as the Spirit of God as they are ever One and this is attested to by the Master who tells us that “I and my Father are one” (John 10:10) and of which He further speaks in this relationship of ONENESS saying that “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” (John 17:21). Can we see the intent of Paul’s words that carry us from the idea that a man is not acting in the flesh if the Spirit of God dwells in Him  and that if this Spirit of God, the God Within, is not active in one’s Life, if the things of the Lord are not a man’s focus, then he cannot make any claim to Christ. Further, the apostle is telling us that when the Christ Within is active in the man then the body is dead and there is much meaning here that is carried over from the previous chapter. Previously Paul speaks of the body of death and in this reference we see that the carnal Life, the Life focused on the things of the world, is essentially the death of the Soul in form; he affirms this above in telling us that the Christ has freed him from this “sin and death” and that is understood in that the flow of the Love and Power of the Christ through the form nature frees the man by the action of his focus on the things of God. In this current verse Paul is speaking of this from the different perspective of the man in Christ, saying that when one is focused on the Christ Within and away from the carnal Life that the body, the carnal Life, the flesh, is essentially dead and the fullness of the Life of the Christ Within is expressed through the form. This is the objective that Paul gives us elsewhere but in more simple terms saying: “And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” (Galatians 5:24). In this saying by Paul is the full extent of what a man must do in fulfilling his role as a True disciple.

In this ALL we should see at work the reality of the Master’s teachings albeit from a different perspective than of Paul trying to assure the aspirants and the disciples at Rome that if they turn away from ways of the flesh and concentrate their Life’s attention of the things of God. In doing this the Spirit Within, regardless of how it is called, will come to Life through form because the Life within the form IS the free flowing Love and Power of God; and this Paul calls righteousness. Righteousness can be here interpreted according to the lexicon that tells us that: in a broad sense: state of him who is as he ought to be, righteousness, the condition acceptable to God; the doctrine concerning the way in which man may attain a state approved of God; integrity, virtue, purity of life, rightness, correctness of thinking feeling, and acting; in a narrower sense, justice or the virtue which gives each his due². We can also call this keeping His words and following the Christ and the Christ Within. This ALL starts, as our Quote of the Day presents, with Love.

We close here and will pick up these thoughts in the next post where we should be able to finish our work on these words from Paul to the Romans.

Note on the Quote of the Day