Love is the Fulfilling of the Law
ON LOVE; PART CCLXVIII
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•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•ΑΩ•Α
“Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive; But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love. This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Ephesians 4:13-18).
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•ΑΩ•Α
Of all that the Master told us, He considered this as the Greatest of Commandments. So much of what we are to understand as aspirants or as believers is found in the precept that we must KEEP HIS WORDS:
“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 12:30-31).
We ask ourselves WHAT THEN IS LOVE?
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.
We add to this THE EVER IMPORTANT AND HIGH IDEAL TAUGHT TO US BY THE CHRIST which can serve to both give us an understanding of what it means to Love oneself and how it is that we can Love our neighbor:
“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them“ (Matthew 7:12).
These words above are on Love and we have been using these words or words very much like them since early in our series of essays which started nearly two years ago. Of course the Master’s words do not change except if we use the verbiage from a different gospel, but ours do and this as we understand the deeper meanings of His words and as greater revelation of the Wisdom from above, become apparent to us. Note here that we say become apparent; in this we should understand that there is no new thing written or said that did not before exist but rather that we did not see the meaning before that we see today….we were effectively blinded to it by our ‘not looking’ which is the effectual working out of the Master’s words. Jesus tells us that this is the purpose of the parable and we extend this to the many parabolic sayings that the Master and His apostles offer and here in this word parabolic we infer that the True clarity is hidden behind the outermost understanding of the literal words that they offer. He says several times words like: “Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand” (Matthew 13:13) and we should try to see that this reality works out on many levels of understanding which likely coincide with the stages that we premised in the last essay. This is to say that the greater our focus on the things of God the greater our seeing, our hearing and thereby our understanding and this IS that greater revelation that we can achieve.
Now there is a contrary and an expanded view to the words from the Apostle James on the Wisdom from above, words that we discover when we look at the entire thought rather than isolated verses, and this expanded look brought us to the reality that there can be naught for the self or even the extended self in this Wisdom. And, this is in addition to the Wisdom test that we originally saw in James’ words and which we have used as our way of discerning that a thought, attitude or action is Truly from above, from the Soul. There is also a contrary view of the precept of the Master on seeing and hearing and we find this in John’s Gospel where the Master tells those Pharisees who ‘believe’ that they already see that “If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth” (John 9:41). We should see in these words the reality of illusion and glamour at work as well as a better understanding of our idea of focus. Here they are focused in the world, this IS their sin, but they believe that they are focused upon God simply because they are Pharisees whose tradition tells them of their closeness to God. We use the idea here of contrary with the understanding of being unfavorable or adverse to the other views and not necessarily opposite and in this we should see our point which we have discussed previously in regard to James’ sayings which begin with those things that ARE from below and these ARE, ALL of them, thoughts, attitudes and actions of the self in the world. James’ complete thought here is:
“Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. 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 3:13-18).
We should here remember that the King James rendering of bitter envy and strife is incomplete at best and is subject to the wrong understanding of jealousy and rivalry and, while these may be a part of James’ intent, the fullness of his idea is in this as unlocked by Vincent who relates bitter envying to emulation and tells us that strife is clearly a wrong translation and interpretation. Our expanded view on these words can be found most recently in IN the Words of Jesus parts 657 and 660 and can be traced further back through the references found there; our word studies here have led to our understanding that these words refer to the things of the self as self interest, self-serving, self-absorption, self-devotion and even self-righteousness and in these terms the apostle’s saying have much more force and make much more sense than the common understandings found here and in other bible versions which see the limited ideas of self in jealousy and faction but miss the point of selfish behavior as the general trend of those thoughts, attitudes and actions that ARE NOT the Wisdom from above. We do spend much time on these words from James and this IS because of the clarity of his words when the are seen in the broader sense rather than the more limited way that doctrine generally chooses and in our review of these words we try to convey our premise of self as it IS in agreement with the many other sayings of the Master and His apostles which may imply that we have no jealousy but which say that we should “take no thought” (Luke 12:22) for things for the self or that we should “….put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Romans 13:14). And, in this word lusts we should see most every strong desire and not only the sexually oriented.
In these two thoughts that we are presenting above, the Master’s words on Love and the reality of the treatment of the self, we find much of the difficulty in understanding the Truth of the Master’s teachings as these are not treated by doctrine in the way that the Lord intended and it IS this lack of True understanding that keeps many from True expression of the Power and the Love of the Soul, the Christ Within, to the world. In many ways these doctrinal interpretations are based upon the worldly view of the Life of men in the world rather than the divine view which the Master takes and teaches us. These ideas of self CAN also be seen as the opposite view to the reality of discipleship as we have been reading in the sayings by the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians that have been at the top of our essay for many days and with which we thought tat we finished our comments in the last post. Here the apostle draws a clear picture for us of what IS the True disciple in his final form and cautions the aspirant who IS yet working out the duality of Life in the world and the disciple who IS NOT yet complete, not yet Redeemed if you will, to stay the course and “That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro” and, most importantly, “that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Ephesians 4:14, 17-18). Can we see here the True understanding of that blindness that the Master speaks of? first that it has naught to do with the eye and second that it has its roots in vanity, in illusion and glamour? Here we should be able to see that this gentile, who we KNOW as the man focused in the self and in the world as opposed to the disciple who is focused upon God and the God Within, lives in this illusion which darkens his understanding of things divine (and this reality of the divine is the primary subject of these verses) thereby alienating him from the Truth and the True Life of the Soul. This ignorance is the result of his misplaced focus which IS found in the “blindness of their heart“.
We should try to see in ALL these words that there are but two broad types of men in the world; the one IS the disciple who is the KNOWER and who IS “a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” and there are but few who so qualify. The other type IS ALL others, ALL of us who fall into the first two stages of men in form from our last essay; men who are totally ignorant of the spiritual Life as the one, and men who are at various levels of realization, levels that range from the slight recognition of their innate Souls prompting as conscience all the way up to the aspirant who IS working out the duality of Life as he comes ever closer to the fulfillment of the criteria for discipleship which IS, in a word, keeping His words. We have in previous posts given the understanding that there are levels of discipleship and degrees of KNOWING; this is in our view True and we take this from our understanding of the Life of the Apostle Peter who we see as our ready example; in saying this we must say as well that we DO NOT KNOW much of these levels and degrees and what point one takes on the nature of “a perfect man“. Considering this we look upon ALL who are not yet at this point of perfection as aspirants while KNOWING that some of these are disciples, as Peter before the Master’s Ascension where we KNOW from the gospels that he IS NOT yet perfect, not yet “unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ“. Our point here is that there is no real line of demarcation that takes one from aspirant to disciple save the fulfillment of the Master’s criteria which is in reality the criteria imposed by our own Souls as the fullness of our realization only comes in the change of the focus of Life from the self to the Soul and, again, here we put this into a word which IS that we keep His words. Further, as one accomplishes this there is yet that journey as we see in Peter’s Life which IS the continual growth of one’s realization, of his KNOWING and this may never end as we DO NOT KNOW what lies beyond this Earth Scheme for us as Souls. So in Paul’s words on the perfect man we measure the True disciple who has grown to the “fulness of Christ” and we then must realize that there are degrees of discipleship where one IS NOT yet the perfect man and, in the sayings from Paul that we have been studying, we see him offering the same caution to them as disciples as he does to us who are aspirants. This then is our rational for calling ALL who are not yet perfect aspirants while realizing that there are among this group those who are disciples from the Master’s perspective. The Master gives us these same ideas of the connection of being perfect and being as the Master, as the Christ, as He tells us “The disciple is not above his master: but every one that is perfect shall be as his master” (Luke 6:40).
We can look at our premise of the stages of Life in form from the perspective of the Soul as these combine with the two broad types of men in the world and come up with an number of different scenarios but ALL would necessarily be in the same basic reality and the differences can most all be accounted as being viewed from different perspectives. In the view of the aspirant, which we count ourselves as, there is the reality of the Master’s words that tell us that there IS God and mammon as the focus of Life and these would be seen from His perspective in their totality much like we have taken from Paul’s words on the “a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ“. In both of these there is from our perspective the idea of one or the other as the focus of Life in the Master’s lesson on God or mammon or, as the idea that we either ARE or we ARE NOT perfect as we read from Paul. Focused upon God totally and being perfect are one pole and ALL others are the other pole; in this view there IS NO being in between. This IS an important reality and these ARE the two broad types of men. Within these broad classes, we can find stages and we should add here that any seemingly contradictory ideas in this are more a matter of perspective than error. In the world of mammon, of the men whose focus IS on mammon, we have those ranges that we spoke of in the last post and again above, and these go from complete and total focus upon the world and the self, up to our own presumed state of being as aspirants who are working toward discipleship. In the world of focus upon God we have the disciple and, from our perspective and based upon the Master’s words, we see that there IS a disciple who IS perfect and IS as Christ IS and we see then others that are not yet perfect and this we follow in the Life of Peter as well. Now here we are admittedly confused and while we realize that even in this High Calling there IS growth, we do not KNOW at what point we can be considered as being perfect and this IS likely because this Truth is revealed and apparent only to the disciple himself. And so we stop short and we call the True disciple as the man who is expressing the perfection of the Christ Within, the Soul, in his Life in the world and we call the disciple the man who has achieved that criteria of keeping His words, all of them, and who perhaps, as we see in the Life of Peter, still has a bit of duality and some tendency to see things from a carnal perspective. To this we add the man who IS striving to keep His words and who has changed or IS changing the focus of his Life to the things of God and this IS the aspirant. On the one hand then we have the absolutes, the God or mammon focus and the being perfect or not, and at the point of perfection and at the total and unequivocal focus upon God we have the True disciple. On the other hand then we have that disciple who is keeping His words but who IS yet somewhat focused in the world and perhaps we can see in the Master’s words the separation between these two stages as in the former one can say with the Master: “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33) and in the latter he cannot.
In these ideas we should be able to see the difficulty in ascertaining where we place the disciple on this scale of stages; that in His completeness he is the True disciple, perfect and whole and until then, he is like Peter, a disciple who has yet to realize his completeness. We should KNOW however that this matters little to us who are not yet in either place except in relation to our True understanding of the writings of the Master and His apostles as we have in this saying from Paul who seems to be cautioning us ALL who ARE NOT perfect to take care and to continue to grow by dwelling in the Truth in Love. And here our road is laid out for us; the Path that we must travel is clear and is seen in the striving of the aspirant and the unperfected disciple, and we should try to see this combination in ALL places where we are not speaking of the True disciple. We did not get to our point today which was to tie Love to that sense of selflessness that we must develop but we continued somewhat on the saying at the top and these further observations on the nature of the disciple and the aspirant as he relates to the rest of the world.
We will continue with out 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.
Staying on the theme of Love we repeat again the sayings of the Apostle Paul that put this Love into perspective.
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 (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.
Let the peace of God rule in your hearts!
- 4 Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
