Love is the Fulfilling of the Law
ON LOVE; PART CCXX
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•Α•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•Α
Our presentation over the last few days is from our view of the meaning of Easter. While the Passion of our Lord is real, while it is at the hands of the Romans and the ‘religious’ Jews, it is as the same time the result of an elaborate Plan whose objective was to accomplish this end….that the Master would be put to death by the uninformed, that is, the uninformed as to the reality of Life in form. According to some legend and tradition the Romans ‘washed their hands of the matter’ and they only implemented the desires of the Jews and it is likely that from both perspectives, the Jew and the Roman at the time, that they convinced themselves that they were eliminating a thorn in the side of each. The sentiments of the High Priest are seen in this from the Gospel of the Apostle John: “Then gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? for this man doeth many miracles. If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation. And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all, Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not” (John 11:47-50). Here we should try to understand that there is much happening that is beneath the surface and the most of this is based in the illusion and the glamour of the people of the time and the emotional attitudes that they had fostered as men exist in that time as and in an emotionally driven society. In the midst of these forces of Life the Jew believes that he is God’s chosen and the priest believes that He does God’s work and this despite the reality presented by their own scripture and their own prophets. This is the nature of illusion and of glamour, that it makes a man to believe what is not True and this the delusion in which the “chief priests and the Pharisees” live. They believe that they ARE instead of God IS and it is in this state that they look past the fact that “this man doeth many miracles” and choose a politically expedient solution to their problem, the thorn in their side. As we have said in prior essays the Master understands this ALL and in many ways He likely relied upon their ways to help Him to accomplish His goal of being put to death; we can see this in the words that Jesus uses to tell his apostles of the nature of the Jew in that day saying: “They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me” (John 16:2-3). And the reality of this is in His statement that they do such things “because they have not known the Father, nor me” and here is the reality of their being uninformed as well and not because they have not been shown nor taught but because, as a society, they believe in the ‘gospel’ of self righteousness , they see Life in form as the True Life and the word of God as a guideline that they can skirt around, picking and choosing what they must obey and never looking from the perspective that we get from get from the Apostle James who tells us: “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all” (James 2:10).
In their execution of the Master the Jews, and the Romans too, believe that they are justified in acting and doing as they did while the reality is that they are deluded by their own self-serving attitudes and ways and this IS the result of that vanity that the Apostle Paul tells us of saying: “For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope” (Romans 8:20) and this vanity is our own sense of illusion and of glamour as these forces afflict the ways and the cultures of man in the world. These men are so enamored by their own sense of right that they are blinded to even the suggestion of reality as the words and the acts of the Master should have provoked, they are blinded as well even to the words of those among them who may have better understood. They do not see Jesus as the One who was to come, their own Messiah that is promised to them, and this likely is because He comes in disagreement to their ways but it is likely deeper than this as is suggested by John who tells us “The Pharisees therefore said among themselves, Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing ? behold, the world is gone after him” (John 12:19). Can we see two things here? first that the rulers of the Jews and the Romans played their predictable part in the Great Drama that ends in the Master’s death and resurrection and secondly that sadly, this same dynamic of a self-righteous church who sees the Master come again, perhaps in the ways of a different religion or a different teaching than any particular culture sees as the ONE Truth, that He would have to face the same type of ‘discrimination’ by the many who would rather hold to their doctrinal beliefs and traditions than face the Greater Reality of Truth, and this no matter how He may frame it or execute it. It is here in this scenario that the secular world could have a greater relationship to Him than the religious and this is much like the what we see in the gospels where the publicans ans the sinners are moved by the Christ ahead of those who profess to be religious and this because they see will see Him without the preconceived ideas of who and what He should be.
So the Master is put to death by the uninformed, by those who can not or will not try to recognize the realities of Life in form and who hold to doctrinal beliefs and traditions as though they are a True KEY to the Kingdom of God and He is resurrected by the Power and the Love of God for no Greater Purpose that to show us the way, to teach us of the temporal nature of the Life of the man in form as compared to the eternal nature of the True Life of the Soul. But, 2000 years later we still do not see this; we have not yet broken down the parabolic speaking of the Master and His apostles who write for us the Truths couched in the vagueness of language; Truths that can only be discerned by the man who made the choice to look away from the ways of the world, away from the doctrines of old and away from the traditions of culture. This is a choice that IS the reality of Repentance, the reality of hearing the call of one’s own Soul over the selfish attitudes that cloud the minds of men, this is the reality is sparked by His words and the words of His apostles as they are reflected by our own conscience as our cause to action. As the hands of Time move on, they move the evolution of man with them, not the evolution that we understand insofar as species and the like are concerned, but rather the evolution of mind in form through that species that was deemed a suitable Temple for the Soul in the world. And it is this evolution of mind that will eventuate in the deliverance of the race of men in from that vanity that Paul tells us of above and to that which he also tells of saying that “the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). And here today is our choice as men in the world who can either choose the traditions and the doctrines or the reality of Life as it emanates from one’s own Soul, or neither, which is to stay in that self-absorbed delusion that afflicts the majority of men yet today. As we have said, this choice of the turning one’s Life toward the Truth as it emanates from one’s own Soul and in accordance with the teachings on what such Truth in its essence IS, IS Repentance and it is in man’s continual Repentance that he IS Transformed. We should understand here that this idea of continual Repentance is real from the perspective of the man in the world who has the predicted difficulty of extracting himself from his focus on the self and the things of the world and then putting that focus on the things of God. This change of focus IS Repentance and it is a change that we must ever be diligent to continue in as the carnal mind is easily led astray by the attractions of the world to the “affections and the lusts” that man is charged to overcome.
When we can see and appreciate the Passion of Our Lord as His own Strong Desire to call man to His side, to awaken him to the reality of Life that is heretofore covered in illusion and glamour, then we will better understand the reality of His Life, His death and His resurrection. So long as man views His Passion as His untimely death on the Cross and His resurrection as a Holy symbol of His Divinity only, he will be mired in this same sense of vanity, illusion and glamour that has always beset men in form. By His teaching in Life we are made aware of the reality of the Kingdom of God and our responsibility to achieve it; by His death on the Cross we must learn of the reality of the temporal nature and the relative insignificance of such Life in the whole of the scheme of our True Life; and by His resurrection we must come to see the reality in His words that tell us that we can, as disciples, be as He IS, we can do as He has done in Life and in Death and we will continue as the Soul, the Spirit that IS the True man, who IS in True command the forces of the world, the forces of illusion and glamour, to such degree that we can stand with Him as say as He does that “I have overcome the world“ (John 16:33). The gateway to the realization of eternal Life is found in keeping His words which makes of us disciples and counts us among those who are accounted worthy of the Kingdom of God; the cost IS Repentance and in True Repentance we give up all claims to any and all attitudes, thoughts and actions that benefits the self in the world and allows us to put our focus upon the True man, the Christ Within, who becomes our expression of Life in the world.
In what we call the Easter Story we have the Master’s end game so to speak; He teaches us ALL we need to KNOW, some by parable and proverb but most of the Truly important ideas and ideals He teaches us in plain language making His words abundantly clear to ALL who choose to hear and to accept them. ALL that has to do with keeping His words, and what those words essentially are, is given to us in rather plain language; it is those things that we do not ‘need’ to KNOW regarding the “mysteries of the kingdom of God” (Luke 8:10), death and resurrection and the like that are intentionally clouded but we should KNOW that these are things that will come to each of us as we endeavor to accomplish those things that are offered to us in plain language. And, if there is any wonderment as to what these clear essentials are, the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew’s Gospel is the place to start. The reality is however that men, in and out of the churches, would rather deal with the unknown quality of those things that are covered in parable and proverb, than to deal with the KNOWN qualities of those things that are plainly offered. The aversion to the clearly stated is of course that to comply is may be inconvenient or against the normal way of Life in the world and hence the tendency of doctrine to change and dilute the Master’s words. And this is the whole of the Master’s message that we should comply with those things that we are instructed to do by His word and the prior commandments of the Lord that the Master amplifies and clarifies much as the apostles amplify and clarify the words of the Master for the world. The art of discipleship requires that we turn away from the normal way of Life in the world and, from our perspective the way to the Kingdom requires the same.
There is a clue to this idea of how one looks at the word and although for most in the world today this is not practical, it is of use to the man who independently looks at the words and the examples of the Master and His apostles. The issue with the most of the world that we reference here is that they rely on doctrine and on others to teach them and therefore learn only what is taught. In the exchange between the Master and “a certain lawyer” we find the Master’s probing question in response to the question that He is asked. We read: “And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live” (Luke 10-25-28). Here we have the simplicity of our point given to us by the Master in His asking “how readest thou?” and then this is our question? Do we read scripture with the intent of following the words regardless if their effect upon the Life of the man in the world or do we read with the intent of finding clever ways to fit our own Life and our own proclivities into the word thereby changing the Truth of what it says. The Master brings this phenomenon up to the Pharisees regarding the commandments and the created doctrines held in those days and He simplifies the accusation by way of the Prophet Isaiah’s words some 700 years earlier which were True then and True in Jesus day; we read these things in this regard:
- “Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men” (Matthew 15:7-9).
- And the doctrine that the Master refers to is revealed in this exchange: “God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition” (Matthew 15:4-6) and we should recognize here that the making of a doctrine does not change the commandment and that those who do this thing, while succeeding in the pretense of keeping His words, are breaking that commandment and, according to James above, thereby breaking ALL.
- The Master also give us this in this same exchange which starts with the questioning by the scribes and Pharisees saying: “Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread“; the Master answers as in our two points above and then tells those assembled: “Hear, and understand: Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man” (Matthew 15:2, 10-11). The reference here is of course to the tradition, the doctrine of washing, which is nowhere found in scripture but is adopted by the Jewish religious leaders and accounted as a commandment and likely taught as such as well.
How much of today’s doctrines fall into these categories; how much of the Master’s word is intentionally overlooked by those who create doctrine and this either by simply ignoring that which is considered unpleasant or by changing the context or the meaning of His words.
We will continue with our thoughts in the next post.
| Aspect of God |
Potency |
Aspect of Man |
In Relation to the Great Invocation |
In relation to the Christ |
|
GOD, The Father |
Will or Power |
Spirit or Life |
Center where the Will of God IS KNOWN |
Life |
|
Son, The Christ |
Love and Wisdom |
Soul or Christ Within |
Heart of God |
Truth |
|
Holy Spirit |
Light or Activity |
Life Within |
Mind of God |
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:
Leaving again the Great Invocation, we encourage ALL to read and reread it and our comments as in these words can be found the keys to our spiritual reality.
From the point of Light within the Mind of God
Let light stream forth into the minds of men.
Let Light descend on Earth.
From the point of Love within the Heart of God
Let love stream forth into the hearts of men.
May Christ return to Earth.
From the centre where the Will of God is known
Let purpose guide the little wills of men–
The purpose which the Masters know and serve.
From the centre which we call the race of men
Let the Plan of Love and Light work out
And may it seal the door where evil dwells.
Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth.
This prayer is a part of our Prayers and Meditations section and there is much information about it there and in our discussion of it in the Quote of the Day section of In the Words of Jesus parts 128-132
The above Invocation or Prayer does not belong to any person or group but to all Humanity. The beauty and the strength of this Invocation lies in its simplicity, and in its expression of certain central truths which all men, innately and normally, accept—the truth of the existence of a basic Intelligence to Whom we vaguely give the name of God; the truth that behind all outer seeming, the motivating power of the universe is Love; the truth that a great Individuality came to earth, called by Christians, the Christ, and embodied that love so that we could understand; the truth that both love and intelligence are effects of what is called the Will of God; and finally the self-evident truth that only through humanity itself can the Divine Plan work out.
Like the Lord’s Prayer, this invocation is a World Prayer which is as all that a prayer is intended to be. It is a prayer for the uplifting of the Human Family out of the mire of materialism and selfishness. The Lord’s Prayer asks nothing for the individual praying it but asks that its benefits be for US and for WE which is why it was given by the Christ as a prayer and as a model over 2000 years ago. This invocation is also attributed to the Christ who, as He promised, has never left us; He, through channels that we do not readily understand, has Himself instructed His disciples to distribute this prayer and to encourage its use as a world prayer and as an aid in preparing the world for His return.
The first three stanzas of this prayer should be understood as reflecting the effective potencies of the Trinity which is God and which, when brought down to an individual level, the Trinity which is Man. His Will, His Love and His Light we should see them as the Potent Powers of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit albeit on a much smaller, microcosmic, scale.
Let the peace of God rule in your hearts!
- 2 New Testament Greek Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
- Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
