Love is the Fulfilling of the Law
ON LOVE; PART XXI
ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•Α
GoodWill IS Love in Action
ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•Α
“Strive to enter in at the strait gate for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able” (Luke 13:24).
This is where we ended our last post; with the Master’s words regarding the difficulty of attaining the Kingdom and, as we see it, attaining to discipleship as well. Jesus does not tell us here that it is impossible and we KNOW that it IS NOT but He does tell us that many “shall not be able“. We relate this inability to the vanity which the creation has been subjected to and which both IS and which causes the illusion and the glamour in which the world of men lives. Of paramount importance in this subjection to vanity is the sense of self that it engenders in man and this we discussed in some detail in the last post saying that it is this sense of self, and of the vanity that causes it, that prevents a man from fulfilling the Love commandments of the Master. The difficulty then that the Master tells us of above can be directly related to this subjection to vanity, which is the illusion and the glamour with with men struggle, and can be seen as well as the ultimate reality of repentance when viewed as that change of heart that takes a man’s focus away from the self and the things of the world and to the things of God.
Our lead saying is framed a bit differently in the Gospel of Matthew where we read: “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:13-14). Here the intent is the same and in these words we should be able to see that ease of the things of the world from the perspective of the man in form, living for the self and the benefit of the self in the world, the world of things if you will; here we have the wide gate and the easy way and when looking at this apart from the doctrines of the church, we should see that destruction or perdition, as this Greek word is also translated, is the continuation of the Life in form and for form which is of course contrary to the ultimate objective of the man which is, as the Apostle Paul tells us, to be “delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). On the other side of the Master’s words we find the hope and the expectation of salvation as seen from the perspective of the Soul, the Christ Within. Here the narrow or strait gate and the narrow way show us the difficulty of overcoming the things of the world, the illusion and the glamour by which we are held captive, until we can realize the Truth of the Presence of the God Within and reach out for Him or, as the Master tells us, to strive. Can we see that in the understanding of this word strive is our word of focus and it is this focus upon the things of God that is our resolution and our deliverance from the corruption of the world and into the “glorious liberty of the children of God“.
We must understand that ALL of this has its resolution and its deliverance in the Master’s commandments on Love and that without this expression of Love ALL that a man may do or think that he has done is for naught. Love is the very foundation for the True spiritual Life of a man and it is in this Love that ALL other spiritual collateral can be built. As we closed this section in the last post we close this again as we move on to our next topics: In this All we should understand the challenge of the Master’s words that tell us that we must “Strive to enter in at the strait gate” and of which He cautions us saying that “for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able” (Luke 13:24). Unless we drop this sense of self and come willingly to the Love as expressed by the Master and follow the Golden Rule, we will be among those that “shall not be able“. And, we should understand that what we have accomplished in spirituality is naught without these, our expression of the Love of God and the selfless attitude that allows us to be forever in peace and harmony with our brother.
So much of the Master’s words are His instructions to us on how one can extract himself from the forces of the world of things. He gives us stepped instructions that are centered on Love and a man’s interaction with others and there is an overriding aspect to His teachings which goes ignored by the many because they find it difficult to change. This is of course that a man must give up and forsake ALL that he has come to KNOW in this world. We did, several posts back, say that we would come to discuss the fact of forsaking in this modern world and that we did see a key to this in the Master’s many words on the treasure of a man, the treasure of his heart as those things that he attends to and focuses upon. While we have not forgotten this we have at the same time put it off in favor of our recent topics and we should understand that each different way that we approach these things of God can put us closer to a better understanding of how a man can accomplish those things that the Master commands while enthralled in the ways and times of the day. As we have ofttimes said, the most straightforward way is in our expression of the Love that the Master commands and, as we have been saying of late, this very expression is hindered by the subjection of the race to the vanity that is of the world. This is not however a ‘Catch 22’ but rather a mystery that we must break by discerning the reality in which we live, the True nature of man. Paul tells us that we are “made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope” and continues on to tell us that there is a way out saying that we will be “delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:20-21). Here we must understand, as we discussed prior, that the Plan of God fully expects that the man will find the way to break free and to be able to stand with the Master saying: “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). How then do we express this Love of God as the Love of man?
Central to this ability to Love is found in one’s ability to understand and to KNOW the nature of man and the nature of this Awesome Creation and here again we post our chart for the convenience that it affords:
|
Aspect of God |
Potency |
Expressed as Fire |
Aspect of Man |
|
Father |
Will or Power |
Electric Fire |
Spirit or Life |
|
Son, The Christ |
Love and Wisdom |
Solar Fire |
Soul or Christ Within |
|
Holy Spirit |
Light or Activity |
Fire by Friction |
Life Within the Form |
In our chart we find the Trinity that IS God and the Trinity that IS man and we see the reality of the Old Testament creation story that tells us that “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27). We have seen this as the creation of the Soul that is a man, that is the True man, and we have seen in prior essays that the Soul is the manifestation of the Spirit just as the Christ is the manifestation of God. As we read in the Prologue to John’s Gospel these Two are ONE and have ever been and, at the same time, one is the manifestation of the other, the Son of the Father and the Soul of the Spirit. Encapsulated in these words by the apostle is this reality:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not” (John 1:1-5).
While we understand that the divine man, the Soul, that is in the “in the image of God“, this is not the view of most of the Christian and Jewish world who see the mortal and carnal man as made in His image and whose pleasurable Life in the Garden of Eden was cut short and ruined by the actions of Adam and of Eve. There is no easy changing of the mind of those who believe that this is True as this is what they have been taught and ALL that they may have ever KNOWN. This is the same difficulty that the Master speaks of above, the difficulty of KNOWING the Truth and the reality of Life as it is hidden by the illusion and the glamour to which every man is subjected. He tells us also that a man should “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (Matthew 7:7, Luke 11:9) and we should KNOW by the very context of His words that He IS NOT referring to the things of this world.
The first chapter of Genesis is at best cryptic and filled with the improbable but, at the same time, it is an orderly portrayal of the possible steps in the creation of ALL as written for the understanding of the man in that day that these things were put into writing. For the man in that day the creation in which he existed was the center of his universe and of his being and it is likely that for this reason the verses are written in the way and in the order that they appear. We need not get into the order in which ALL is created save to say that we KNOW today that the Earth is a part of the Solar System whose planets revolve around the Central Sun and not that the Sun was created on the fourth day to give Light upon the Earth. Today we KNOW of countless suns and moons and planets as they exist in the universe and that the suns alone are currently estimated to be 300 sextrillion; that is 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. Can we even imagine the primitive and barbaric people in that time of Adam understanding this? And here, we should remember that the people of the Earth still believed that the planet on which they lived was flat until the Classical period in Greece and the Hellenistic period in the Near East*** which are within a few centuries of the Birth of the Christ.
So we have man made in the image of God and it is our True contention that this likeness is found in our chart above, Trinity to Trintiy, Spirit to Father, Christ to the Christ Within and the Holy Spirit as the activity of Life in form. This is the reality of our chart and although we may not have a complete picture, we do have a picture of what is Truly to be seen as man. With this in mind let us look closer at the Quote of the Day that we have been using now for many days; in this affirmation is the elucidation of the Constitution of Man as seen from our perspective of aspirant.
I am a point of light within a greater Light. I am a strand of loving energy within the stream of Love divine. I am a point of sacrificial Fire, focused within the fiery Will of God. And thus I stand I am a way by which men may achieve. I am a source of strength, enabling them to stand. I am a beam of light, shining upon their way. And thus I stand. And standing thus, revolve And tread this way the ways of men, And know the ways of God. And thus I stand.If we have read this as many times as it has been posted as the Quote of the Day, we may have some deeper understanding of the nature of Life by virtue of our reading but reading it frequently or not, we will go by the premise that when a man is ready to receive a deeper truth it WILL register in his consciousness. The first stanza here is a mental picture of the spiritual totality of man which, like the totality of the Trinity that is God, we KNOW that there is buy one incorporating the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Christ calls himself and us the Light of the world and this He says to us early in the Sermon on the Mount where we can assume that He is speaking to men in form and not to His disciples only. In our chart above we find that the correspondence in man of the Life Within the Form in on the same line with the Holy Spirit, the Light of God within the world and the potency of the Holy Spirit as Light of as Activity. In the center position of this first stanza we have the idea of Love and this is the Christ Principal, the manifestation of the LOVE that IS God; the correspondence in man for this aspect of Life is the Soul, the manifestation of the Spirit in the Kingdom of God. Insofar as the Holy Spirit is concerned, this should be seen as the activity of the Spirit and the Soul in form and here we must be careful to not see form ONLY as the physical parts that are visible but rather as the forms of the Kingdom of God itself, that state of being where the Souls that are men exist. To lend a little perspective and hopefully not more confusion, we offer these numbers from the same previous post from which we take the very large number of stars above (In the Words of Jesus part 217 and 374). Here in these posts we say that the number of Souls in manifestation in this ‘cycle’ is said to be sixty billion and this is from the Ancient Wisdom and likely based upon the study of God in the Hindu Vedas. Taking this as a possible Truth, we would see that these need to have a place to be or a state of being which is more the reality and that at this time in Earth history there are just about twelve percent of these in incarnation at any time although this number is steadily growing. While we may believe that this is just the result of the natural factors of conception and birth, is it not a bit more logical from our illogical perspective to believe that this growth is a part of the Plan that is the evolution of Life in form, the Plan of God.
Having seen then the aspects of the Soul as the manifestation of the Spirit and the Life and activity of this Soul and Spirit as the Holy Spirit in man; and, having seen that the reality of manifestation is not this that we have on the Earth but is rather the True man in the Kingdom of God, let us look now at the Principal Idea of God Himself and that part and parcel of God which is the Spirit that IS man. This is God and this is Life Itself and this is ALL beyond our paltry ability to comprehend as men and to be able to put this into words. Life IS and God IS and in His image we ARE and this is the reality that we can but sense when we can put ourselves in that place of contemplation in that reality that is the Soul. This is the Trinity of God and the Trinity of man and, in this KNOWLEDGE the aspirant and the disciple STAND.
Stand can be an interesting word insofar as one’s spiritual Life is concerned and we will pick up with this idea in the next post as we go on to the next stanza of the Affirmation of the Disciple. As we go let us look a a bit of this idea of stand as Paul gives it to us saying: “Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness” (Ephesians 6:13-14). From this we can get a glimpse of the idea that we are standing against the things of the world, we ARE NOT fighting.
We leave again our sayings on faith and believing which we hope to get back to in the next post.
- “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6).
- “The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven, or of men? And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say unto us, Why did ye not then believe him?…..For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him” (Matthew 21:25, 32).
- “Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. 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. Behold, I have told you before. Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not…….” (Matthew 24:23-26).
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.
As the essence of our recent posts has been on Love, what better Quote of the Day can we have but this from the Apostle Paul. We often think and say that the Master teaches Love but we should ever realize that this Love is echoed by His apostles and put forth for us in many ways including the ideas that we presented in the last post on the Love of one’s neighbor. Of ALL of the dissertations on Love by the apostles this one from Paul is perhaps the most important as it gives us the real idea that in discipleship there MUST be LOVE and that without LOVE most ALL that a man can do is for naught. Paul tells us that:
But earnestly desire the best gifts. And yet I show you a more excellent way. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 12:31, 13:1-13,13 (New King James Version)Regardless of our daily theme, the underlying theme of our posts and of this entire blog is Love. In these words from Paul we should be able to see the overriding importance of Love in the Life of each of us. This is a common theme throughout the gospels and the other writings of the apostles and a theme that is not nearly understood. In our theme today regarding Paul’s writings to the Romans and in the previous discussions on them we seek to impart the better understanding of the reality of Life, the Life of the True man as the Christ Within, the Soul, as it is from this perspective that we can gain that revelation of Truth and, as Paul says above, be free from the condemnation and the vanity of Life in form, free from the illusion and the glamour. We repeat here what we said about these verses in a prior post:
Today’s Quote of the Day from the Apostle Paul is his testimony to the power of Love. After speaking at length about the gifts of the Spirit that one should desire in order to be of service to the Lord, he says plainly that Love is a more excellent way. Love in the context of these verses is not the sentimental or affectionate kind that we ordinarily think of but rather 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 defining of Love is covered in some depth in a previous post; In the Words of Jesus part 47.
- * Wikipedia contributors, ‘Flat Earth’, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 29 August 2012
