IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 513

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON LOVE; PART CIV

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GoodWill IS Love in Action

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While there were not many of our own words in the last post, there was much for us to digest as we were following the lead of the last line in the Great Invocation which asks for the restoration of the Plan of God on Earth. Our logic being that if it can be restored, then it must have at one time been here in force upon this planet and for this, we looked back to the Old Testament Book of Genesis. In Alexander Maclaren’s words we found out, from a realistic Christian perspective, what the story of creation IS NOT and, from his perspective, how the Christian could look at it in a better Light away from the archaic doctrines that make little or no sense to the modern man. Mr. Maclaren tells us as we have said ourselves, that it must not be forgotten that this vision of creation was given to people ignorant of natural science ¹² and to this we would add that yet another limiting factor in the presentation is that of language; there are not now nor were there then words sufficient to explain the divine workings of the realm of God in common language. Now we say that these are limiting factors and our understanding of this is not based upon any limitation that we or the people then may have but rather factors limiting the way that the ideas are presented by those Sons of God that put them into language; these ideas had to be stated so that the man in that day could understand them with his limited vision and, at the same time, that they would contain the seeds of deeper understanding for future generations. That the future generations have taken the time to rightly discern the words of Genesis is unclear although there must have been those like Mr. Maclaren down the ages who saw more than the simple doctrine that it is made out to be still to this day.

There are likely others who have seen the different reality in the words of Genesis similar to what we see and, while we take no authority here in being right, we must say that our explanation and other progressive interpretations are better suited to reality than is the doctrinal and literal understanding. We posted 4 points regarding these acts of creation as they effect man and it is here that we will begin leaving the rest of the creation story for another time. First, the part of Genesis with which we are dealing and then our points from yesterday:

“And God said , Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;  And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying , Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed” (Genesis 1:26-2:25).

• The very first controversial point is in the fact of man’s being in the image of God. We must either believe that ALMIGHTY GOD looks like a man and acts like one as well, albeit Pure, or we must believe that the reference here is to the spiritual man. We understand this as the latter but there are problems here as well as in the next verse our spiritual man is being told to “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it“. We will pursue this line in the next post.
  • We have discussed this in past posts and our understanding here should be clear as it is depicted in our chart below. Our God is a Trinity and this Truth is universally accepted in the Christian world as Three distinct ‘persons’ yet ONE God as can be seen in the relationships devised in this Christian symbol:
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  • This tells us that from the Christian perspective that each Aspect is God but that they are individual and distinct. Of course our view here is that there is no separation whatsoever and while there is little teaching on the Trinity at all, there are some that can help us to understand what is is that we say is a Truth. Among the teachings on the Holy Spirit that the Master does give us we find this:
    • “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” (John 14:15:18). Can we see the implication here that the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, and the Christ are the same? Vincent ⁴ gives us some further understanding on this as he relates for us the word Comforter or Paraclete to both the Holy Spirit and to Christ although he maintains the doctrinal separation (see In the Words of Jesus part 260).
  • Our own understanding of the Trinity is beyond the idea of persons and is concerned with the idea of Aspects of God as we present in our charts. In this premise there is but ONE God who is seen differently from different perspectives. These Aspects are inseparable and are not physical nor even Separate Spiritual Beings but rather the expressions and the effects that are portrayed by both God and the True man. While this is a difficult idea to understand, it is no more difficult that the common Christian approach which relegates the Trinity as one of the Great Mysteries. That this is a mystery is certainly a Truth regardless of how one views it but we can make a substantial case for our premise as we look to the functional aspect of Spirit, Soul and our expression in this world as our correspondences to the God in Whose Image we are made. Without this reality what can be the effective realty of this one of the most fundamental Truths: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him“?
  • How then are we to understand the next verse? or the complete saying that “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth“? From our perspective there is but one realty that can work here and while we do not claim authority in this, we are compelled to express a premise on a Truth which leaves us free to understand that the man that is made “in the image of God” IS the spiritual man and not this gross form Life that we KNOW. If we understand that this creation of man is the creation of the spiritual man and, as we have before revealed, that this spiritual man is both “male and female” and requires no propagation, then we can understand much of what follows in Genesis. Can we imagine this? that man is a spiritual being at ONE with God and in the act of manifestation, the Soul, the Christ is born? Not born in any sense that we commonly use the term but born in the act of manifestation; there is God, the ONE Boundless and Immutable Principal, who chooses to manifest Himself and that manifestation IS the Christ Aspect. We cannot imagine what this means but let us look at it in the words of the Apostle John who tells us that “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” (John 1:1-3).
  • Looking further then we have God, Boundless and Immutable Spirit, and the Christ as ONE with Him and the Christ IS Him. So too we have what is made in His image; man, the Spirit and the Christ Within as ONE with the Spirit and the Christ Within IS the Spirit. There IS NO separation and from our perspective the one, the Soul, is the expression of the other, the Spirit, just as the Christ is the Expression of God and we hesitate to say here in time and space for the Expression of God, the Expression that IS God is Infinite and is expressed in realms that we cannot even dream of; the Kingdom of Heaven is ONE of these realms. Taking our thoughts off of the Cosmic understanding of God and seeing forward as regards the Earth, we can come to our next thought. First we should understand that with the billions upon billions of stars and incalculable associated planets, we should understand that what we are barely glimpsing is happening at the same time across the Universe and that what is happening here on Earth is ALL that we really KNOW at this time; this is where we are and where we belong and perhaps the Greater Glory of man is Truly found in his expansion from this little world to greater things in the Cosmos which IS of course ALL of God.
  • Coming then to our realization of Life on Earth as expressed in Genesis, we should try to see that we are yet Souls unborn in physical time and space and perhaps with no way of Truly interacting with the things of the Earth for eons upon eons as the things of the Earth steadily and slowly, from our perspective, evolve. If we can stop here and understand that the Earth is Truly billions of years old and that Life of some form, physical Life, has been around for much of this history and that this is Life that CANNOT support the ‘needs’ of the Soul and hence, the Souls that are created “in the image of God“,  the True man, are not incarnate but rather are ‘living’ in some way in the Earth Sphere but not in physical incarnation as we KNOW this today. Here we can see the role of evolution as it is scientifically seen and while Darwin’s theories may not be accurate to this evolution, they are sound in their concept and lead us to the reality that the form that we use today as Souls began as an animal form that was bereft of the capacity to express itself mentally for many millions of years and that this is the reality that is expressed in Genesis in later verses which we will cover later. We KNOW that the act of creation as depicted in Genesis did not happen in seven days nor did it happen in seven thousand years as may be derived from the Apostle Peter’s words saying “be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). Peter’s words are a expansion on the idea from the Psalm that tells us “For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past , and as a watch in the night” (Psalm 90:4) and we should see in both of these the meaninglessness of time and space in the Eternity that IS God and which we share as Spirit.
  • It is in this timelessness then that we can find the reality of our premise that this saying which denotes the supremacy of the spiritual man over ALL that is in His Earth Sphere is in fact a dominion over ALL from the perspective of the guiding Light that we as men could offer to the fledgling lives of the Earth. How this would work and what this Truly means is a mystery to us here and now but we should understand that we ARE and we WERE, as part and parcel of God, active participants in some way; participating in the greater reality of what the Apostle Paul’s tells us of our role as men in form today, that we are “waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:23).

In the reality of our lives today none of this really matters as the only task before us is to be accounted worthy of the Kingdom of God and fulfill our roles as disciples of the Master. However, a greater understanding of the complexities of Life from the beginning and the dispelling of the archaic pronouncements of doctrine can and will help us to see our True Self, our reality, and this realization is quite necessary to our journey upon the Path to that strait gate that opens into the Kingdom of God.

We will continue with our points from Genesis in the next post.

• The other part of this is in the next chapter where God “formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul“. Here we have either a repetition and explanation of the creation of man in the image of God and both male and female or we have a secondary creation that brings the spiritual man into Life in the earth. Our understanding is the latter and this would become man’s existence in the Garden of Eden.
• Next we have the creation of the woman who was, according to the text, already created with the man during the creation in the image of God. Again this is either repetition and explanation or it yet another step in the bringing forth of the spiritual man into the Earth. There is another rather obscure saying in Genesis which may go well here: “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose” (Genesis 6:1-2).
• Last we have the trees; “the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil“.

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:

We repeat here again a saying that is from the Bhagavad Gita and which goes well with our topic over the last several days. Today we see the God Within us as the Christ Within and this is good in the Christian world and this is True based upon our understanding of the Christ as the manifestation of God. We should see that it matters not what we call this Inner Man as it is the same in ALL, it is the Soul.

Thou carriest within thee a sublime Friend whom thou knowest not. For God dwells in the inner part of every man, but few know how to find Him. The man who sacrifices his desires and his works to the Beings from whom the principles of everything stem, and by whom the Universe was formed, through this sacrifice attains perfection. For one who finds his happiness and joy within himself, and also his wisdom within himself is one with God. And, mark well, the soul which has found God is freed from rebirth and death, from old age and pain, and drinks the water of Immortality.—Bhagavad-Gita

It is difficult to tell just what verses of the Bhagavad Gita the above is from; whether it is a paraphrase or a combination. It is from the book “The Great Initiates” by Édouard Schuré which was originally published in French in 1889 and perhaps it is in the translation of the verses that they become hard to recognize. However, the sheer beauty of the presentation caught my attention and so I share it with you. The Path to the Kingdom is the same no matter what religion one professes.

• ⁴ Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
• ¹² Expositions of Holy Scripture–Project Gutenberg’s Expositions of Holy Scripture, by Alexander Maclaren–(1826-1910)