ON LOVE; PART MXCI
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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).
We ended the last essay with some thoughts on the Apostle Paul’s words to the Corinthians which we see in regard to the separation, the dichotomy, between the man as the Soul and the body in which he lives here in this Earth. While many see the idea of the tabernacle in terms of the structure itself, we should try to see this in a more spiritual way. The tabernacle in the Old Testament was more than a tent, it was the dwelling place of God and here we should try to see the apostle’s way here of showing us the same idea that he offers earlier in his letter where we read: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us” (2 Corinthians 4:6-7).
Paul IS showing us the Soul which IS that Light that “hath shined in our hearts” and if we can see the Apostle John’s words here, the combination can show us the greater reality of men in this world; John says, speaking of the Christ, in the prologue to his gospel: “That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (John 1:9). It IS in this idea of “lighteth every man” that we should see the reality of the Christ Within which IS “shined in our hearts“, our consciousness in this world and which IS obnubilated by the vanity that IS Life in this Earth.
“For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed. Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (For we walk by faith, not by sight:) We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him” (2 Corinthians 5:1-9).
The relationship between the Soul as the spiritual man and the flesh IS a difficult idea to explain as there ARE NOT words to express the depth of this Truth. And while our view IS far from the final answer to the complexity of Life, we ARE closer to the reality of this Life than ARE the religions and the scientists even today. We have discussed these ideas of Life frequently over the course of our blog and we have always maintained that while the Spirit IS the True man incarnating in this world as the Soul, that these ARE in essence the same thing; the apparent separation ONLY shows the purity and perfectness of the Spirt which IS ever One with God and which IS in many respects His expression in form.
In the Spirit and as his manifestation as the Soul we have the reality of the unction that the Apostle John shows us in his first epistle and we should try to understand that this Greek word chrisma means anointing and IS intended to signify the idea of an essence, the essence of Spirit if you will, that IS Within; an essence which the Apostle Paul shows us as “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). The related Greek word, christos, IS most always rendered as Christ, signifying the man Jesus, but the literal translation of this word IS anointed. If we could but see that Jesus IS anointed with the essence of God, the essence of Spirit, as a man in this world, we can then better understand His reality and the Truth behind Paul’s words saying “in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9).
The point here IS that Jesus IS the anointed, that He ‘became’ that essence of the Spirit in this world and, as such, He possessed and He expressed “all the fulness of the Godhead“. This IS Jesus: a Spirit manifesting as a Soul, as the unction or anointing, and ‘using’ or becoming this anointing in the flesh and to express this by overcoming the carnal instincts. Jesus had NO carnal proclivities which He could NOT subdue but this IS NOT True for the other men who come into this world; most ALL men succumb to the vanity that IS Life here in this Earth. It IS this vanity, this illusion and glamour, this corruption, which Jesus teaches us to overcome and He teaches us this by way of our looking past the self and living according to the eternal rule of Love, the eternal rule of agape.
John tells us that “as he is, so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17) and while this idea IS NOT understood in the way that it IS intended, the literal reality remains. Everyman IS Spirt manifesting as a Soul, as the unction or anointing, but, unlike the Master, we ARE lost in the vanity, lost in the corruption, in the illusion and the glamour, and from this there IS but one way out which IS to strive to keep His words. This IS the reality of the freedom that we see in the trifecta, this IS the Truth of His Presence which Jesus shows us in the trifecta and this IS the realization of the Truth of the Kingdom Within as we read again in the trifecta:
- “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).
- “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).
- “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).
Most ALL doctrines refuse to see the essential sameness between everyman and the Christ as Souls as they DO NOT realize that what Jesus showed humanity was the perfect expression of a True Son of God in this world. They also DO NOT realize that the teaching and the display offered by His apostles was their own individual expression of this same Truth which IS perhaps NOT as dynamic as Jesus’ expression, and we see so little of it, but IS their own relative measure of this same perfection. The expression of Truth and Love by the Apostle Peter and by Paul IS the living proof of John’s words saying that “as he is, so are we in this world” and we should ever remember here that both of these Saints grew by measure to their final state.
It IS in their growth from a fisherman and a religious zealot whose view was purely doctrinal to the high state of True discipleship that IS left for us as a picture of the possibilities that lie with everyman; possibilities that the eventual reality afforded us by the unction, the Christ Within, can be ours. It IS the expression of the Soul through his form that both Peter and Paul show us and while we have no documented stories, we should be able to see the same in the Life of the Apostle John. When we can understand that this unction IS the reality of everyman and that this anoye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.inting can have the same effect upon the lives of everyman that it has upon the lives of the apostles, we can then see the deeper ideas behind John’s words saying of the Christ: “That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world“.
The entire Prologue to the Gospel of John paints for us a picture of the Soul’s manifestation of the the Spirit which IS ever One with God. Men however have confounded the idea by translations and interpretations which dilute and change his message. The Greek word logos which IS translated as word would be better understood as Logos rather than to confuse John’s meaning with our common understanding of the idea behind the word word. In the context that the apostle presents the whole idea of Logos IS tied to the reality of the manifestation of God….that His manifestation IS One with Him….that they ARE inseparable. That doctrines have painted this Logos as the man Jesus rather than the Soul qualities that He expresses IS perhaps one of the most unfortunate ideas that doctrines have offered.
It IS the Divine idea of Christ, the manifestation of God as the Universal Christ, that IS the unction and the anointing of the individual man; this IS the reality of the Christ “ which lighteth every man that cometh into the world“. Again, it IS in this idea of “lighteth every man” that we should see the Light that IS the Soul and IS the divine man. And, if we can tie this to Jesus’ own words on Light saying “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light” (Matthew 6:22) and understand the reference the eye in terms of the focus of the man, his single minded focus upon the things of God, we can then understand how that this ALL works together.
In these ideas we should be able to see the spiritual man, the Soul, as part and parcel of God and in this we should also try to see the deeper ideas found in John’s saying that “as he is, so are we in this world“. Then, as Jesus was a Soul, a spiritual man, incarnating and living through the facility of a human form and personality, so ARE we; and it IS the combination of these ideas that IS the human family. We should also try to see how that the Soul, the spiritual man, remains aloof from his Life in form until such time as he IS able to penetrate the vanity, the illusion and the glamour, of that Life. It IS the Soul of which Paul speaks as he tells us that “the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same” (Romans 8:20) and it IS this vanity that prevents men from seeing their own Truth from the perspective of his Life in form.
As we say above, this IS a most difficult idea to deal with as there ARE few, if any, who have first hand knowledge of the how and the why of Life’s Truths and complexities. However, this being said, we can build upon the Truths that Jesus Himself gave us as well as the clarifying and amplifying words of His apostles. Their words ARE NOT hidden from us albeit they ARE seemingly parabolic from the perspective that the man who lives in vanity, the man whom Vincent tells IS living in a: perishable and decaying condition, separate from God, and pursuing false ends.
It IS men’s separation from God, which IS separation from the reality of his own Life as a Soul, that IS the singular reason that men DO NOT see the realities that ARE ALL about them as their focus IS purely carnal. And this carnal affliction goes out to ALL men; the religious and the irreligious; until a man Truly becomes a seeker of the spiritual Truths that ARE already within him, the unction if you will, he will continue in his carnal sleep. And this IS the greater reality of Paul’s words to the Romans which begin in Love, in agape, as the Way to awaken and to see the essential Unity of ALL men and to ‘put off’ ALL of the carnal inclinations by which they continue in sleep.
Again, the translations of words fail us and if we can see those carnal behaviors that Paul lists here in more spiritual terms as we identified in our study of Galatians, we can then understand what it IS to “put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof“. We read the apostle’s words to the Romans again saying:
“Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law. For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Romans 13:10-14).
Until men begin the task in this Life to Truly “put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ“, they will NOT see nor understand the deeper ideas that ARE presented in scripture nor the ideas that we discuss here. Scripture will remain in doctrine and our thoughts will remain but gibberish, as have the words of many in the past, as they ARE swallowed up in doctrines and derided by the presumed authority of those who teach them. In the greater ideas of the spiritual man who IS ever One with God and IS manifest as the Soul in His manifested Universe, we have the reality of man. NOT of the man in the world who IS but an expression of the spiritual man who IS lost in the ill illusion and the glamour, “made subject to vanity” as Paul shows us, but the True man who IS in the process of overcoming this vanity as Jesus shows us to DO.
We should understand here that everyman and Jesus ARE the same in every way but in the way that the Master who, while afflicted as we ALL ARE by the vanity, had the Presence of God, the Truth and His Kingdom as His expression from birth. Jesus had the ability to NOT be overwhelmed by the illusion and the glamour as ARE most ALL men while being subjected to much the same indoctrination and nurturing as His peers. Jesus had the spiritual collateral to awaken Himself from to the Truth as perhaps the first Truly Divine man born into this Earth. We have NO record of Jesus’ early Life save for some rather obscure ideas from the past and such works as The Aquarian Gospel, and neither of these IS an actual record; we have only our own assumptions that He perhaps had a normal childhood for those days as He prepared His own flesh, His own body and personality, to deal with those things that He KNEW would come His way.
It IS in this sameness that we should find our own encouragement and it IS in the painted Life of the apostles Peter and Paul that we should understand that the early Life means little in the end. Both were nurtured and indoctrinated as children of their times albeit along very different lines; Paul was indoctrinated in the ‘higher’ points of the Jewish religion of that day while Peter was brought up as a child of the land if you will to become a fisherman. Neither likely had an inkling of what their future would hold but each, as a Soul, was prepared to Repent, when the time was right; prepared to follow the Lord according to the Great and Awesome Plan of God. Jesus IS our symbol of Truth and our encouragement and Peter and Paul ARE our examples of the way that this can work in the Life of everyman.
In this we should understand that as Peter and as Paul everyman IS a Soul that KNOWS the Truth as John tells us saying that “ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things” (1 John 2:20). Everyman has opportunity to recognize the Light over the clamour of daily living and to seek the Truth and Repent. And everyman IS scripted, if we can use that idea here, to DO SO as part of the Plan of God. But ALL must overcome their own degree of nurturing and indoctrination and heed the inner call which IS the prompting of one’s own Soul to the Good, the Beautiful and the True….the things of God.
We will continue with our thoughts in the next post.
| Aspect |
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.
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 a Quote of the Day that we spent much time with over the course of our essays. In this affirmation we find the Truth of discipleship as we have been ever been expressing and here we can relate our themes of the last few days; “take no thought” for the things of the world and that we approach the Kingdom and discipleship in the nature of the little child, in humbleness, meekness, unashamed in any way and unassuming. The message that this imparts for us today IS that it IS the Soul that is at work in the world of men as it expresses to some degree the purpose, power and the will through Life in this world. These words are from a meditation offered to his students by our Tibetan brother and in which we find greater understanding of the message of the Master. This IS Truly the way of the disciple.
My Soul has purpose, power and will; these three are needed on the Way of Liberation.
My Soul must foster love among the sons of men; this is its major purpose.
I, therefore, will to love and tread the Way of Love. All that hinders and obstructs the showing of the Light must disappear before the purposes of the Soul.
My will is one with the great Will of God;. that Holy Will requires that all men serve. And unto the purposes of the Plan I lend my little will.
Let the peace of God rule in your hearts
- 4 Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
