Love is the Fulfilling of the Law
ON LOVE; PART LXXII
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
“Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? 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. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works’ sake. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do ; because I go unto my Father” (John 14:3-12).
We had a thought yesterday which is appropriate for this time in these United States and that is the effect of the political will of the rulers as it is this will that becomes the will of the people and this, whether they desire it or not. We say this with the understanding that in a good many nations today the rulers are elected by a majority but there are times when the politics of the ruling party drifts away from the will of the majority that put it in power. This drift is sometimes pushed back on by the minority and even some of the majority and this can and does lead to revolution although not necessarily a revolution of violence. The political landscape is a necessary evil in the world today and we say evil from our concept of the word as it relates the things of the world and of the self. In less than two weeks this country will elect a new president and this from a choice of two major candidates as the minor candidates will have little effect. It is not our part to chose sides nor to offer opinion on the candidates but rather to offer a caution based upon the words of the Master. It is estimated that more than two billion dollars will be spent in this election cycle and it is safe to say that each side wishes to use their parties funds to effectively ‘buy’ the election through advertising and this with the attitude that the more cash one has, the more ads one can run and the more people one can influence. This happens around us while a good number of people, in this country alone, live in despair, are hungry and homeless and while these people have little or no say in the whole of the election process.
When the entirety of the campaigns is aimed at making the opponent look bad through deceitful statements, stretches of the truth and even outright lies while promoting one’s own abilities with much the same tone, we, as citizens and voters, must be careful of what it is that we hear. This is the instruction of the Master regarding spiritual things and here today we use it in relation to the secular as well. There is Truth and the Truth in the secular world works the same way as the Truth in the spiritual realms and this is to say that we cannot believe ALL that we hear; neither from the self appointed authorities, the media of any kind nor from our own biased selves. Men tend to believe spiritually and secularly along the lines of what they think that they KNOW, what they have been nurtured on and what proclivities there may be in their nature and, of course, this does not make what one believe right although the believer will think so. This is yet the effect of illusion and of glamour as a man will delude himself along the lines of his belief and will tend to believe what he may hear along those same lines. Then, when an untruth is spoken about the opposing candidate, this becomes agreeable to the man’s own biased beliefs, it is believed and it is assumed to be True. This of course happens on both sides of nearly every argument.
Our caution then is that we be careful of what we hear which saying we can interpret as be careful of of what we perceive to be true and to measure it according to the same qualifications that we would measure that Wisdom from above that we have discussed from the writings of the Apostle James. We leave this discussion with two selections from the New Testament:
- This first is from two different perspectives, one of hearing and one of judging and we should consider how these can be the same in relation to our discussion above. We should relate also the idea of measure with the act of judging or hearing or, we can say here, by the degree of believing.
- “For with what judgment ye judge , ye shall be judged : and with what measure ye mete , it shall be measured to you again” (Matthew 7:2).
- “And he said unto them, Take heed what ye hear: with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you: and unto you that hear shall more be given” (Mark 4:24).
- This second one is again the words of James on Wisdom and should be from our perspective a way of Life: “But 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. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace” (James 3:17-18).
We left off yesterday with this list of ideas from the Master’s words. In each of these phrases is the note of the ONENESS of which we are speaking and we should here note that these are in response to the question by the Apostle Phillip asking the Master: “Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us” which question is asked by the apostle after Jesus’ discourse on the Way, the Truth and the Life, as these relate to the Father. As we said in the last post, there were likely no words then that could explain the relationship better than the Master is doing while at the same time keeping it hidden from ALL who are not yet ready to KNOW. This ‘hiding’, if you will, is the objective of the parable and of the proverb as that word is used in the Gospel of John and while many do believe that they have broken through this barrier of parabolic speaking by the Master, if their answer does not result in the sense of ONENESS and does not encompass the Love and the brotherhood that is the Master’s overriding message, they are wrong. Such is the nature of the parable from the Master’s perspective and He gives no quarter to those who claim that they KNOW as He says to His True disciples that “Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand” (Luke 8:10).
- “If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also“
- “henceforth ye know him, and have seen him“
- “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father“
- “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?“
- “the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works“
These several sayings by the Master are spoken to His disciples who are not Truly understanding what He is saying nor what is going on. For us today the realities spoken here seem clear but this is not the case for the majority of ‘believers’ who rely on doctrine to understand the Master’s sayings. In our first instance above, “If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also“, we see a reality that we should ALL face and which is covered in the reality that we are as He is. When looking at the Master, “all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9) is what we will see and this because He is the expression of this fullness. At the same time, He tells us that, as disciples “every one that is perfect shall be as his master” (Luke 6:40) which is to tell us that as we become perfected, as we can perform and accomplish those things that the Master tells us are necessary to discipleship and being accounted worthy of the Kingdom, we also can express this fullness. Can we understand here that seeing Jesus in the flesh is equivalent to seeing Him as Spirit and as Soul and that this is where the Father and the Son come together for Him and for us. Can we see that He is saying to them that if you can see me as the Son of God, then your have seen God for they are ONE.
Continuing upon the Truth of the foregoing statement, the Master is simply telling them that now that you KNOW this Truth, you KNOW the Father and your have seen Him because you KNOW Me and you see me. However, even with this expression of Truth in the Master’s words that “henceforth ye know him, and have seen him” the disciples do not yet understand as it is here the Philip speaks as we discuss above. Here again the Master emphasizes and says yet clearer that “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father” and He then continues in His explaining these things to the disciples. Can we get a glimpse of the difficulty that they are having in understanding these things and can we appreciate their utter confusion when the Master goes on to imply to them that they are as He is and can do as He does saying that: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do“.
The next two statements above relate to the ONENESS that the Master is teaching to the disciples and which teaching continues beyond our verses at the top of these last several essays. Here Jesus is telling us that He is in the Father and that the Father is in Him and here we apply again our idiom ‘part and parcel’ as they, the Father and the Son, cannot be separated. Again we must lean on the idea that “as he is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17) to openly understand that this idea of ONENESS, being True of the Master, is True then of us as well. So then, when the Master says that “I am in the Father, and the Father in me” we must see as well that we are in the Father and the Father is in us and this is True both individually and en masse. The Master goes on to further explain that “the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works” which is to say that it is the Power of God that works through the form of the man; it is not the form of the man that is capable of anything and in this we should get the same understanding as from above but from a different perspective because in His saying that “the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do” we now understand that it is the God within us that is capable of these things. We can carry this thought as well to the Master’s saying that “With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26) and then again to His saying that “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth” (Mark 9:23). Of course, we must understand that in this latter saying the idea of believing IS NOT as is commonly thought but is as we have presented from Vincent’s writings; that we accept and adopt His precepts and example as binding upon the life 4, we will pursue this idea of what is possible with God further in a future post.
We spent a bit of time in the last post looking at the interrelationships of ALL of the components of our chart below, of how there is a ONENESS of ALL things spiritual. Today we close with the words of the Master that imply for us this same thing; He says:
“If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; 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. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live , ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world? Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent me. These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you. 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 14:15-26).
We leave with this thought; in the Master’s saying that “I am in the Father, and the Father in me” we find the reality of ‘part and parcel’ which we understand as something that cannot be separated. In our next verses we find “I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you” and here we have the reality of our being ‘part and parcel’ of the Christ, we cannot be separated, and, in turn, we are ‘part and parcel’ of the Father for the Christ IS in the Father and the Father in Christ and we are in Christ as well. We MUST remember here that we speak of us as the True man, the Soul, and not this gross form.
We will continue with our thoughts in the next post.
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Potency |
Aspect of Man |
In relation to the Christ |
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GOD, The Father |
Will or Power |
Spirit or Life |
Life |
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Son, The Christ |
Love and Wisdom |
Soul or Christ Within |
Truth |
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Holy Spirit |
Light or Activity |
Life Within |
Way |
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.:
So that we do not forget that the reality of this ALL is still LOVE which is our Truth regardless of whatever other realizations may come to us in Life, we present here again the Apostle Paul’s words followed by our own understanding of this reality:
….but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law (Romans 13:8-10).
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)
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)
Unlike so much of the Master’s sayings that come to us in the form of parables and for which we can only surmise that we have the spiritual presence to understand, these sayings are very straightforward and they are the key to many of the promises of spiritual life; they are the very key to the Kingdom of God. To these sayings we add our adopted definition of the Greek word agape (agapao) which is translated into the English words Love and Charity and which is:
‘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’
- 4 Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888.
