ON LOVE; PART DCCCI

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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. While this IS from an older definition of Charity, which IS rendered in the King James Bible from the same Greek word agape which IS generally rendered as Love, we should amend our own definition here to include the idea that in the reality of Love a man will accord to ALL men ALL things that he would accord to himself and to say that Love IS our thoughts and attitude of the equality of ALL men regardless of their outward nature or appearance…that ALL ARE equally children of Our One God

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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 essay we were taken to the ideas behind the Master’s words saying “I have overcome the world” as this relates to the rest of the Truth of our spiritual reality in this world. That IS the reality of the grace of God as the revelation and the realization of His Truth and His Presence which IS, in its fullness, the state of the True disciple and the man accounted worthy of the Kingdom of God. While men may believe that the Kingdom is a place to go after death based in the various doctrines that teach these things, the Truth of the Kingdom remains in His words as that state of being for that man who can keep His words; it IS this man who will find that “glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21) which IS the reality of True discipleship. The Master’s words ARE clear but they ARE distorted by the conventions of men who seek to place themselves into His words without DOING the necessary work. The clarity of Jesus’ saying that “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21) should show men the True way to His Kingdom but this idea is discounted by doctrines that teach such things as John Gill’s interpretation which says of “the will of my Father which is in heaven” that this IS:  This, as it may regard private Christians, intends not merely outward obedience to the will of God, declared in his law, nor barely subjection to the ordinances of the Gospel; but more especially faith in Christ for life and salvation; which is the source of all true evangelical obedience, and without which nothing is acceptable to God ⁸. Few see the reality of this saying and fewer still understand the similar reality behind the idea that “except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20). Can we see the scribes and the Pharisees as among those who would say “Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say” as so many do yet today and can we see how that in anything short of keeping His words, the Kingdom of God, the very Presence of God in one’s Life, IS NOT possible as we read again in Jesus words from John’s Gospel:

“He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. Judas saith unto him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world? Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent me” (John 14:21-24).

In the intertwining of ideas that show us that keeping His word brings us the Kingdom, we read the same regarding discipleship as the Master tells us “”If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31-32) where we also find that it IS in discipleship that we are Truly free and it IS in discipleship that we “shall know the truth“. To this we must add the reality of His Presence from His words above that show us this as His manifesting Himself and as His abiding, with the Father, in the Life of the man who keeps His words. We should see as well how that this reality of the Presence of God relates to the reality of the Kingdom Within which Jesus shows us saying “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). In ALL of these ideas we should see the reality of the Kingdom, of discipleship, and of His Presence as the state of being of the man who keeps His words, the man whose focus IS squarely upon the things of God. And it IS here that we also find the Truth of righteousness; in the saying above we find the man who calls upon the Lord as the man who may believe himself righteous and it IS here that we find the greater reality that unless this man “doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven“, that he will NOT have that righteousness that will “exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees“, he will NOT have the righteousness of God which we ARE admonished to seek after as Jesus tells us to “seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33).

And it IS at the intersection of ALL of these ideas that we find the Truth of being “born again” which idea describes the state of the man who IS accounted worthy of the Kingdom of God. In Jesus words to Nicodemus we find this reality which shows us that being “born again” IS the same state of being as that of the disciple, the man who has the Presence of God in his Life through the common link to keeping His words. As the Master tells us that “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3) we should clearly see that to be “born again” IS to keep His words and although the apostle uses different terms, we should see this same in the words of the Apostle John as he speaks of the man who IS “born of God“. In John’s saying that “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God: and every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him“, we should see the relationship between believing and keeping His words via the very fact that both result in this same reality of being “born again“, and we should NOT forget the deeper reality that if one believes that He IS God, that He IS Lord, that we should keep His words as one would per force DO for any ruler. And John gives us further ties as well saying: “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God” (John 3:9); in this we should see the state of being of the man who IS Truly “born again“, that “he cannot sin, because he is born of God” and in this we should see the deeper reality of righteousness. We should see the importance of this idea as the apostle repeats it for us saying “We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not” (John 5:18). We should note here that the Greek word rendered as the phrase “that wicked one” IS poneros which IS generally rendered simply as evil and while doctrines have chosen to ascribe a personality to this evil, the greater Truth IS found in understanding this as the ways of the world and of men in the world; here we could see that it IS these things that DO NOT touch the man who IS “born again“.

It IS with this in mind that we come to the idea of overcoming which we began our essay with; the reality that the evil “toucheth him not” IS the result of overcoming the wiles of the flesh and of the world and this IS the deeper Truth to the Master’s own saying that “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Again, as we discussed in the last essay, the gateway IS found in keeping His words which IS the reality that must be seen in the way that John uses the ideas of believing and of confessing. It IS in keeping His words that we ARE able to do those “greater works” and perhaps the greatest of these IS that we can “overcome the world“. While the severity of these ideas of confessing and believing ARE missed by most and accounted as the simple carnal ways of men’s emotional and mental approach to God, the reality of His words IS evident in the idea that there ARE NONE who can DO such “greater works” as He as there ARE NONE that Truly keep His words and in this idea of NONE we reflect only upon the general population and NOT the few who have accomplished these things. If the simplicity of believing and confession could bring these things to bear on the Life of the man, that he could “overcome the world“, be His True disciples and be accounted worthy of the Kingdom of God, then the world would not be in the shape it IS in and has been in over the centuries of strife and wars. Similarly, if faith in the common understanding, a Greek word that is closely allied to that rendered as believing, were sufficient to move the mountain, there would be among us many who could change the world.

And so the apostle tells us that “whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world” and then shows us that it IS the man who sees the Lord as the Son of God, the man who believes that He IS God and thereby keeps His words, that this IS the man who can DO as the Master, this IS the man who can “overcometh the world“. This we read as John’s words saying “Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 John 5:4, 5). John furthers the reality of this intersection of words and phrases as we read “Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God” (1 John 4:15) and in this we should see how that this idea of confessing, like the idea of believing, ARE the reality of keeping His words as this IS the way to have His Presence according to the Master’s own words above. There are many intersections of these words and here in these last few essays we have added the idea of overcoming the world to the list of things that ARE equal in the spiritual reality of man. It IS the man who has overcome that IS the Son of God in full realization of His own reality, the man who has attained to the Kingdom of God and the man to whom the promises that we find in the Book of Revelation will come; we read these again and extend our list:

• “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God” (Revelation 2:7).
• “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death” (Revelation 2:11).
• “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written , which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it” (Revelation 2:17).
• “And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations” (Revelation 2:26).
• “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches”  (Revelation 3:12-13).
• “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame , and am set down with my Father in his throne”  (Revelation 3:21).
• “He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son” (Revelation 21:7).

There IS deep significance in this word that IS rendered as overcome in the New Testament and we should see the reality of this in the Master’s own decree that “I have overcome the world” in the Gospel of John and in John’s vision that speaks of the man who will DO as He has done, that “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame“. This is the fullness of a man’s realization of Unity with God, a Unity that IS the reality of the adoption that the Apostle Paul speaks of which IS in the compound idea of the man who keeps His words sharing the throne with the Master who shares the throne with the Father.

We close again with our selection from the fifteenth chapter of John which we will try to tie together with our thoughts on overcoming in the next post:

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit. Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you” (John 15:1-12).

We will continue with our thoughts in the next post.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

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.

Repeating a Quote of the Day from the past that has some significance in relation to what we are discussing here, that the Kingdom of God and therefore God is within us ALL and that it IS His Presence which a man realizes by measure as he begins his journey to the Kingdom of God. Here Lord Tennyson poetically tells us just how close God Truly IS and how it is that we touch Him

Speak to Him, thou, for He hears,
and Spirit with Spirit can meet
Closer is He than breathing,
and nearer than hands and feet.

(Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1809–1892)

From the poem The Higher Pantheism which puts forth the authors spiritual belief. Whether we agree with him or not, the quote if spiritually perfect for all of Christianity as well as any other world religion.

The thought behind the idea above IS NOT unlike that which we have been carrying as our Quote of the Day for many essays; It IS in the closeness that Lord Tennyson shows us that we should see the idea that “God dwells in the inner part of every man” which we read in the previous Quote of the Day. For us this saying and the previous one show us the closeness of the spiritual self to the Father and then too the closeness of the spiritual self with the personality of man. Men may like to think of God as something outside and above but the reality, as we have seen in so many of the sayings of the Master, is that God is with us and in us and we need only to let ourselves be drawn and to focus upon Him. And, if we can use these words from the Gospel of Thomas here we can perhaps see much: “When you come to know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will realize that you are the children of the living Father“

Let the peace of God rule in your hearts

• ⁸ Bible commentaries on BibleStudyTools.com