IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 1099

ON LOVE; PART DCLXXXVIII

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GoodWill IS Love in Action

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FIRST IS THE GREAT COMMANDMENTS: “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).

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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.

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PLUS THE EVER IMPORTANT AND HIGH IDEAL TAUGHT TO US BY THE CHRIST: “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” (Matthew 7:12).

In the last post we took some time from our look at the Master’s words and His exchange with the Apostles Thomas and Phillip to look at another saying from Jesus on the same subject that we find at the end of our selection from the fourteenth chapter of John’s Gospel that we repeat again:

“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 14:1-12).

We should understand that these words at the end are the culmination of the entire selection and that they ARE a part of Jesus’ response to the apostles’ questions and request; that they should NOT ONLY see the sameness of the Father and the Son; that they should NOT ONLY they see that the words and the works that the Master DOES ARE NOT of Himself as the man Jesus in the world but that they ARE of God, of “the Father that dwelleth in me“; but that they should see and understand the ultimate reality that they too can DO these same works by the same Power of God Within each of them. This IS the Truth of the Master’s message but this IS NOT what IS seen in the doctrinal view of the Master’s words, a view that DOES NOT see the Love and the Power of the Christ Within for each man who can realize these Truth by the fullness of believing on the Master. These very words, believing on, ARE so diluted by the world’s doctrines that it IS ONLY the man who IS outside, or who steps outside, of the doctrinal church who can see His Truths. We again cite the ideas from Vincent regarding this believing in or believing on and we should understand that he points us to the Truth of keeping His words and we should be able to also see his point in the most simple rhetorical question posed by the Master saying: “And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46). Many millions profess to KNOW and to Love the Lord as their Lord and Savior but few there ARE that Truly see the Light of His words and DO them, few there ARE that Truly keep His worlds.

Vincent tells us that to believe in or to believe on the Master IS:  to accept and adopt His precepts and example as binding upon the life ⁴, and there should be no doubt as to what this interpreter of Greek ideas in the bible means an it IS in this acceptance and adoption of His words and His example that a man will come to keep His words. We should see here that the cost of coming to that position in Life where one can DO these “greater works” IS keeping His words and we should understand here that the man who DOES so IS the disciple, the True disciple of the Lord. It is toward this position, this station if you will, that we strive as aspirants and disciples and it IS this same idea that we should take from the opening ideas that Jesus presents in our selection….that by following Him each man IS being prepared for this place, this station in Life as a disciple of the Lord. Again we should note that this IS NOT the doctrinal view of His words that are deemed by many to relate to the doctrinal view of Life and the doctrinal view of the heaven or of the “Father’s house” and our ideas on this are redundantly explained in the last several posts. Our reality here IS that ALL of these words by the Master point us to the reality of the Oneness of God and Christ, the reality of the God Within and the Christ Within the Life of the Master and then our understanding that we too ARE the same….men in the world who can express the fullness of the Godhead through believing on Him which IS keeping His words.

This IS the underlying message here and one that IS visible ONLY to the man who has that realization and revelation of Truth in his waking consciousness, revelations and realizations that flow forth in that anointing, that unction, that the Apostle John tells us of saying: “ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things….the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him” (1 John 20, 27). As we have often discussed, this idea of unction or anointing IS from the Greek word chrisma which IS from the same Greek word as Christos which IS generally rendered as Christ but which ALSO means anointed. The Master of course DOES not use the idea of anointing or anointed in regard to Himself nor DOES He refer to Himself directly as the Christ; He leaves these ideas to the perception of the man who sees and who hears Him. He does however refer us to the yet deeper Truths in His own Life: seeing as His expression to the world as Jesus IS the fullness of the Christ, He shows us that this very expression IS of the Father, IS of the Spirit, and in this we see the Oneness of ALL. It IS ONLY from a practical point of view that we speak of the Christ Within as the motivator of the spiritual Life of the man in the world and as the reality of the Soul;  we should remember at ALL times that the Christ Within and the God Within are One and the same and this the Master shows us in saying “I am in the Father, and the Father in me” and that “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father“.  We should understand both of these ideas as that the essence of the One IS the other and that their operation in Life in this world IS One and IS accomplished in the sense of grace that IS the Holy Spirit, the expression of the Godhead and the Christ in the world of men.

In John’s words we should try to see the amplification and the clarification of the Master’s words regarding this idea that we can DO as He DOES and that this idea of the anointing in the Life of the man in the world IS reserved for the disciple, for the man who keeps His words and this is understood in the ideas that lead the apostle into this idea of the anointing; we read: “And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him. He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked” (1 John 2:.3-6). This IS the greater reality; that we keep His words if we expect to see and the understand the prompting of the Christ Within, the anointing as John paints this. And while many see the ideas of antichrist as the greater meaning here in the apostle’s words, this IS but a caution to NOT follow those who DO NOT walk “even as he walked“. Here IS the greater reality of keeping His words from the apostle’s perspective and this IS the same as the reality of the words from the Master that this ability to DO as He DOES is for the man who believes on Him, the same man who keeps His words.

And this IS the reality of discipleship and it IS in putting ALL of these ideas together that we can see the greater picture and understand that in the same context as we see above in our election, in the context of keeping His words,  that a man can realize discipleship and understand the meaning of His words saying to us that: “the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do” The force and meaning here IS the same as those sayings that we discussed in the last essay saying: “The disciple is not above his master: but every one that is perfect shall be as his master” (Luke 6:40). To us this IS clearly the same as the idea presented in John’s Gospel as IS this version from Matthew’s Gospel” “The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household?” (Matthew 10:24-25). Both of these however are seen by doctrine as that they DO NOT apply as we see them but ARE rather a comparison in a carnal sense of master and servant. We see the Truth of His message as that the disciple can be “as his master” and we see the confirmation of this in the more expansive words from the Master in our selection of His words according to John.

Again doctrine DOES NOT see the reality that we see and although there ARE parts of the doctrinal church that do see the reality of the ‘supernatural’ in theory, they DO NOT see this as Jesus intended. Some doctrinal ideas on this include:

• The Commentary Critical and Explanatory of the Whole Bible interprets the entire selection, beginning with Jesus response to Phillip, together saying: 8-12. The substance of this passage is that the Son is the ordained and perfect manifestation of the Father, that His own word for this ought to His disciples to be enough; that if any doubts remained His works ought to remove them works of His were designed merely to aid weak faith, and would be repeated, nay exceeded, by His disciples, in virtue of the power He would confer on them after His departure. His miracles the apostles wrought, though wholly in His name and by His power, and the “greater” works–not in degree but in kind–were the conversion of thousands in a day, by His Spirit accompanying them ⁸.
• John Gill, in his Exposition of the Bible says: Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, &c.] Having mentioned his miracles as proofs of his deity, he assures his disciples, in order to comfort them under the loss of his bodily presence, that they should do the same, and greater works; for we are not to understand these words of everyone that believes in Christ, of every private believer in him, but only of the apostles, and each of them, that were true believers in him: to whom he says, the works that I do shall he do also; he shall raise the dead, heal all manner of diseases, and cast out devils; things which Christ gave his apostles power to do, when he first gave them a commission to preach the Gospel, and when he renewed and enlarged it: and which they did perform, not in their own name, and by their own power, but in the name, and by the power of Christ: and greater works than these shall he do; meaning, not greater in nature and kind, but more in number; for the apostles, in a long series of time, and course of years, went about preaching the Gospel, not in Judea only, but in all the world; “God also bearing them witness with signs and wonders, and divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost”, ( Hebrews 2:4 ) , wherever they went: though perhaps by these greater works may be meant the many instances of conversion, which the apostles were instrumental in, and which were more in number than those which were under our Lord’s personal ministry ⁸.

In both of these commentaries we find the authors dismissing the effect of the Master’s words by assigning the greater works to conversions and by explaining that these “greater works” are the purview of the apostles ONLY. Neither of these ideas is offered by the Master and it would be our contention that these views are tied directly to the lack of understanding of the Truth behind the idea of believing on or believing in the Master. While Vincent leads us into our understanding of the Truth of these ideas of believing in and believing on, his views of this saying are also basically doctrinal in effect albeit a bit different in context; he says: Greater works; Not more remarkable miracles, but referring to the wider work of the apostolic ministry under the dispensation of the Spirit. This work was of a higher nature than mere bodily cures. Godet truthfully says: “That which was done by St. Peter at Pentecost, by St. Paul all over the world, that which is effected by an ordinary preacher, a single believer, by bringing the Spirit into the heart, could not be done by Jesus during His sojourn in this world.” Jesus’ personal ministry in the flesh must be a local ministry. Only under the dispensation of the Spirit could it be universal ⁴.

The overall ideas of doctrine ARE that these “greater things” ARE NOT within the scope of the ability of even the True disciple in this day, that the disciple today CAN NOT be “as his master“. This IS NOT however the Truth of the Master’s message nor the message of His apostles. The difference IS squarely in the perception of the Way to follow the Master…that the idea of believing IS merely assent to His Greatness or that this believing IS the reality of keeping His words. We of course see the latter and we should here try to understand that this concept of keeping His words has NO True carnal part as this IS accomplished in the grace of God which flows into the Life of a man in the world in the same measure by which he strives to keep His words….not by commandment but by the natural inclinations DO so that IS this same idea of grace. And this ALL begins in the reality of True Repentance, that decision to change the direction of one’s Life and his focus off of the self and the self in the world and onto the things of God.

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 repeat here again a saying that is from the Bhagavad Gita, which goes well with our theme of the God Within, the Soul, which we see as the Christ Within and while this is good in the Christian world and is True based upon our understanding of the Christ as the manifestation of God, we should also see in these words below that it does not matter what these divine ideas are called; that it matters not what we call this Inner Man, that he is the same in ALL, he 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.

Let the peace of God rule in your hearts!

• ⁴ Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
• ⁸ Bible commentaries on BibleStudyTools.com