Monthly Archives: June 2013

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON LOVE; PART CCCVII

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GoodWill IS Love in Action

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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).

We spent our time in the last essay exploring the concept of Repentance which we see as the beginning of one’s journey, the entrance if you will to the Path that leads to that strait gate which opens into the Kingdom of God. Hence, Repentance IS the beginning of the Way of the disciple and therefore the Way of the aspirant and the Way on ANYMAN regardless of his religion, or creed, or social status or any other variable that can be measured in human terms. Here, in this sense, ALL men are equal and the Way IS the same for ALL; there ARE NO shortcuts, there IS NO special dispensation given to any particular religion or culture, ALL must tread the same Path which begins in Repentance and leads us ALL to the Kingdom of God. Here it matters not what one believes, it ONLY matters that he hear the prompting of his own Soul’s message to the Good, the Beautiful and the True and while it may appear that the individual approach of men may vary by religion or culture, it Truly does not as this appearance IS based in the way of the personality and his own peculiar place and way of understanding. We should try to see that any man who is short of that High Calling of a True disciple, one who can say with the Master “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33), is likely to process whatsoever revelation or realization that he may receive from his Soul, that Wisdom from above that the Apostle James tells us of, according to the way of the personality, according to the established thoughts and attitudes of the Life in form whether based in nature as a man’s proclivity, or in nurture as those things that he has learned, whether True or false. It IS in the process of Transformation that a man must overcome these ways of the personality which are for each individual a part of his own world to overcome. From this view, this most important concept of Repentance IS that decision taken by the man in the world, in accordance with the hearing of the prompting of his own Soul, to subject himself to this period of Transformation with the intent of taking his focus ever more off of the self and the self in the world and placing that focus upon the things of God and the Life of the Soul, the Christ Within.

The Apostle Paul, speaking to disciples and aspirants at Rome, tells them that they must “be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind“, and in this we should be able to understand that the work of Transformation goes on into that period where one would be considered a disciple and most certainly is one’s work throughout his period of being an aspirant. Here we should see as well that the mind of the man in the world IS his outward expression; it contains his thoughts and his attitudes and IS the impetus to his actions. It is this aspect of the personality of the man in the world that must be changed, Transformed, from the ways of the world to the ways of God so that “ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12;2). This idea of being Transformed is found throughout the gospel although the Master does not use this term which IS peculiar to Paul’s writings. In every instance where the Master encourages a change of attitude, in every saying in which the Master instructs us on how one should think and act as a disciple, and in every place where he tells one that he has helped to “go, and sin no more” as He tells the “woman taken in adultery” or any of His many words to this effect, we should be able to see the idea of Transformation. And we should not think that the Master’s message to these that He helps IS that thay should cease from any particular offence but rather that they should cease for ALL offenses, ALL sin, which we KNOW as the focus of the Life on the self and the things of the world. We should add here that there is a message from the Master to ALL that are here gathered as He shows them by His words of Truth that same thing we receive from Paul who tells us that “….all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) and this IS a lesson that men in the world ofttimes forget. This lesson from the Master is seen much like the Golden Rule of which we read from Emmet Fox that I PRACTICE, the Golden Rule of Jesus instead of merely admiring it. Here, too many see these words from Jesus “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (John 8:3, 7, 11) as admirable, as it IS just a saying instead of taking it to heart and realizing that we ARE ALL THE SAME in this respect as well. These men likely see the Master’s words as reflecting upon the idea of sin as an evil thing done against the Law rather that the broader understanding that we have that sin IS a man’s focus upon the self and the things of the world. And this matters not if one IS looking to the self the world, he CAN NOT be at the same time keeping the law in its true intent and in its entirety nor can he be keeping the words of the Master. Our point here is that in these words to the assembled crowd and in these words to the adulterous woman is the essence of this concept of Transformation and this same message can be found in most ALL of His teachings and words of healing as well as in His words to the effect of “thy faith hath made thee whole” (Matthew 9:22) as these should be seen in much the same way and as an acknowledgement that the person addressed has entered the Path that leads to the Kingdom of God for it IS on this Path that we will find True faith as we understand it.

We left off yesterday with a quote from the Apostle John’s First Epistle; in this selection are several points that we use frequently in our essays including our reality that “God is love” and that saying by which we can relate the Master to ourselves as John tells us that “as he is, so are we in this world“. These are important parts of our overall understanding of God and of Life but our reason for posting this in the last post as we moved it from the previous Quote of the Day to the main essay was for the reality it can give us as we try to measure ourselves in our own Repentance. We should note that the entirety of our journey, should we choose to make it, is in regard to God and to His Kingdom and that the process of Transformation is the steady progress that we make in keeping His words. It IS in doing this that we move from aspirant to disciple and, of course, it IS in Repentance that this journey begins; it IS in Repentance that we enter upon the Path. We could have chosen from many of the sayings of the apostles to help us to define our own individual state as regards our decision to change, our own Repentance, and we chose this one because of the dramatic way that it identifies the beginning and the end of our journey which IS Love. The apostle tells us:

“And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him, because he first loved us. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also” (1 John 4:16-21).

We have learned from James that if we are not keeping His words but only believe that we are because we may attend services of read or be part of this or that group, that we are deluding ourselves and here we expand a bit upon the apostles actual words that tell us clearly that we must: “be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (James 1:22) and our expansion here IS NOT upon the idea of doing but in the idea of hearing as we see that in the broad stroke this includes ALL things that a man may believe about himself in relation to God and his deceiving here is in relation to this belief….while not actually keeping His words. In this we ARE ALL involved until we can come to that perspective, through Transforming, where we can see the Truth and this IS a major step upon the Way. And a major part, THE major part, of keeping His words IS in keeping His words on Love and here in John’s words we can see the same sentiment that we find in James except instead of the blunt approach of deception we have the even more blunt approach of classifying the man who does not keep His words on Love as a liar. And we should NOT get tied up here in the word rendered as hate; although this IS the Greek word’s meaning in English the common idea that we see in hate today is not the intent with which it IS used in the day of these writings. This we can see in the Masters’s words according to Luke were He instructs us we CAN NOT be His disciple if he “hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also” (Luke 14:26). Here we have interpreted this logically as that a man should Love “his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also” LESS THAN he Loves the Lord and we add here the Lord Within as well. It is in this construct that we should view the idea of hate in John’s words as well and not strictly as that rather viral detestation of others as it has become in our modern vernacular. Webster’s early dictionaries do include in their text that we use from 1828 and 1913 this idea of Love less as they tell us: In Scripture, it signifies to love less ¹ AND To love less, relatively ¹ respectively but these ideas are absent from our more modern dictionaries.

We are spending this time here on this word hate as it IS typical of the type of words and phrases that by doctrine men are led astray and miss the import of the True intent of the Master or the apostle. Here we have the relationship between hate and brother and from our perspective both of these words are misused by doctrines which tend to the narrower interpretations instead of the broadest. In another verse the apostle tells us this: “Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning. Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth. He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now” (1 John 2:7-9). For these words we have this from Vincent which IS indicative of the doctrinal approach to John’s words here and in our saying above as well; Vincent tells us this as a part of his overall presentation on the word hateth and the word brother: 

• On hate: Hateth (μισων) The sharp issue is maintained here as in Christ’s words, “He that is not with me is against me” (Luke 11:23). Men fall into two classes, those who are in fellowship with God, and therefore walk in light and love, and those who are not in fellowship with God, and therefore walk in darkness and hatred. “A direct opposition,” says Bengel; where love is not, there is hatred. “The heart is not empty.” ⁴
• On brother: His brother (τὸν αδελφόν) His fellow-Christian. The singular, brother, is characteristic of this Epistle. See 1 John 2:10, 1 John 2:11; 1 John 3:10, 1 John 3:15, 1 John 3:17; 1 John 4:20, 1 John 4:21; 1 John 5:16. Christians are called in the New Testament, Christians (Acts 11:26; Acts 26:28; 1 Peter 4:16), mainly by those outside of the Christian circle. Disciples, applied to all followers of Christ (John 2:11; John 6:61) and strictly to the twelve (John 13:5 sqq.). In Acts 19:1, to those who had received only John’s baptism. Not found in John’s Epistles nor in Revelation. Brethren. The first title given to the body of believers after the Ascension (Acts 1:15, where the true reading is αδελφων brethren for μαθητων disciples). See Acts 9:30; Acts 10:23; Acts 11:29; 1 Thessalonians 4:10; 1 Thessalonians 5:26; 1 John 3:14; 3 John 1:5, 3 John 1:10; John 21:23. Peter has η αδελφότης the brotherhood (1 Peter 2:17; 1 Peter 5:9). The believers. Under three forms: The believers ( οι πιστοί ; Acts 10:45; 1 Timothy 4:12); they that believe ( οι πιστεύοντες ; 1 Peter 2:7; 1 Thessalonians 1:7; Ephesians 1:19); they that believed ( οι πιστεύσαντες ; Acts 2:44; Acts 4:32; Hebrews 4:3). The saints ( οι ἅγιοι ); characteristic of Paul and Revelation. Four times in the Acts (Acts 9:13, Acts 9:32, Acts 9:41; Acts 26:10), and once in Jude (Judges 1:3). Also Hebrews 6:10; Hebrews 13:24. In Paul, 1 Corinthians 6:1; 1 Corinthians 14:33; Ephesians 1:1, Ephesians 1:15, etc. In Revelation 5:8; Revelation 8:3, Revelation 8:4; Revelation 11:18, etc. ⁴
  

This latter one is rather lengthy as we leave in the scripture references that Vincent cites. We should see two things here; first that in this idea of hate there is the reference to the Master’s words from Luke’s Gospel which Vincent see as carrying a similar message and one that we can understand in our own terms of to ‘Love less’. When we understand that we should Love ALL, this idea of ‘Love less’ takes on a different meaning and we can likely see in the idea of being against Him. Keeping with our idea of ‘Love less‘, we should also be able to understand the sentiment as noted above where love is not, there is hatred. “The heart is not empty.” However, we can only understand this from our perspective of ‘Love less‘ else there IS the common understanding of hatred where there IS NO Love. From our own experience we KNOW that this IS NOT True and that the more common feeling toward those that ARE NOT Loved is ambivalence or no specific feeling at all. Taking Vincent’s ideas of hating we would have to be against “his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also” In our original saying above then we should understand that if there IS a brother that we DO NOT Love as ALL others then we ARE at fault and John does clarify this saying later on that “for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen” but this IS lost as the attention remains on the common idea of hate. Here we must make exception to our understanding that we Love ALL equally for the idea of our Love of God which IS primary as we note in the saying at the top of our essay, the first part of the Great Commandments. It IS in this idea of brother that we have the greater difficulty and it IS in this that we must measure our own understanding of Repentance which we KNOW as that decision to change from our own selfish focus to focus upon the things of God and upon His word. Our measurement then in the form of a question can be:  Do we believe that we can be Truly Repentant if we see Love for our brother as anything short of Love for ALL men?

So then as a man lives in this world of illusion and of glamour and perhaps seeks to Repent as the Master says, he must realize that this Repentance, this decision to change one’s focus from the self and the world to God through the promptings of his own Soul, he must be in a position of consciousness where he can accept his own inner prompting on Love as this emanates from the Soul, to trust this, and to act upon it in opposition to what he may have thought as a personality in the world. He must overcome here the tendency to separation and prejudice and ALL such nurturing ideas that he has lived with and while he may not yet be able to express this Love for ALL, he must at least understand the Unity of ALL men by the revelation and realization that he receives as part of the prompting to the Good, the Beautiful and the True. This premise of ours effectively locks out of True Repentance ALL men who CAN NOT see this sense of Unity of Life in the world as a working premise of their own. As we have oft said, Love IS the beginning and the end of our journey and it IS the paramount part of the Master’s teaching and of the Way of the disciple. Hence we have used the sayings above from John as our gauge to the Truth of our Repentance and perhaps here, from the perspective of that decision to change we should look at this more as: are we mentally and emotionally capable of doing this thing, of Loving our brother, and the neighbor and the stranger who qualifies as both? If we can answer yes here we CAN qualify as Repentant upon our decision to pursue this Love as we Transform ourselves into aspirants and then disciples.

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.

We reprise this Quote of the Day from  previous posts along with our comments at each use of this. In these words we should be able to see the way of the disciple and not in that day only but in this day as well and we should understand that the Love and the Power to accomplish these things that are spoken of by the Master are within our grasp as well as these ARE the Power of the True disciple.

And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give. Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat. (Matthew 10:7-10)

From our original use of this as our Quote of the Day we have: These are words that we saw in a recent post as the Master’s words sending off the twelve to preach and to heal among the people. It is said that He gave them the power to do so and in this we can see that He gave them the confidence to accomplish what they did. Through the purity of one’s Life in form does the power of the Soul, the Power of God, flow through his very being and it is in this flow that also comes the Faith and the KNOWING. Is there a lesson here in this saying for those who desire to walk in the footsteps of the Apostles of the Master; as Disciples of the Christ?

In our subsequent use of these words we said: Today’s Quote of the Day is from the Master’s instructions to His disciples as he sent them forth and in this we should see our own instructions which are that we do the works of God, that we teach the Truth of the Kingdom and that we serve our fellow man. What it is that we receive from the Christ Within, what is revealed to us is FREE, we must give again FREELY and it is of great importance that we must be in a attitude of forsaking, leaving ALL the things of the world behind, bringing with us only the humble nature of a True Son of God.

Let the peace of God rule in your hearts!

• ¹ Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1828 and 1913
• ² New Testament Greek Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
• ⁴ Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888