ON LOVE; PART MCXXXVII

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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).

As we come upon the Easter celebration for 2017, we note that the world IS in much the same condition that it was last year and perhaps even less on that necessary Path that IS guided by Love. The Path to Truth, which IS ever the Path guided by agape, IS the True Way that IS the realization of everyman who Truly has the Love of God in him; NOT the idea that God Loves us so much as one’s possession and expression of some measure of that same Love. It IS the Love of God that IS the True message that the Master brings us and it IS ONLY this Love, a glimmer of which shines through in the hearts of most men, that will change the world.

It IS this glimmer that IS the hope of the world and here we should see hope as the desire for good rather than the expectation of good which IS the better defining idea for the Greek word elpis that we find in the New Testament. But this hope IS NOT enough and it never has been; this IS evidenced by the constant strife and wars that have plagued humanity from the beginning and especially the beginnings of those factious human ideas of religion and nations. It IS Love that Jesus brought to the human family and His intent IS ever that this Love be a unifying flow of Truth that could become the foundation of human interaction according to the Great Commandment, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself“, and the explanatory idea that “all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them” which call the Golden Rule.

These ARE the True foundation of Christianity and these ARE the True definitions of agape being expressed by men in this world. But these ideas and these ideals CAN NOT be expressed by men who ONLY see themselves as individual men rather than as “the children of your Father which is in heaven“. And while it IS easy for men to think and to believe that they ARE such children, they miss the point that Jesus makes saying “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Matthew 5:45, 44) plus ALL of the sayings that come before this in the Master’s Sermon on the Mount.

As unawakened men we CAN barely find the wherewithal to “Love your enemies” under that nebulous idea of Love as this IS commonly understood. Love as that mental and emotional attachment and attraction to others DOES NOT work in this sense of “Love your enemies” and, for the unawakened, it works ALL the less when Love IS considered as agape. Agape IS, simply put, the Love of God and to fulfill this Love IS to “love thy neighbour as thyself” and that “as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise” (Luke 6:31) which IS the Apostle Luke’s framing of the Golden Rule. To Truly Love there must be some realization of the Truth and some measure being awakened out of the doldrums that IS the nurturing and the indoctrination that most ALL men must endure.

And what then IS that Love that comes to men according to their nurturing and their doctrines? It IS a rather nebulous emotional and mental view that DOES NOT nearly approach the reality of agape and the Christian idea of ‘Love the sinner, hate the sin’ IS but a doctrinal attempt to assuage the most fundamental commandments of the Lord. Agape IS NOT emotional and it IS not mental save in the Life of the man who Truly understands the depth of the Master’s teachings and in whom that glimmer of Truth has been allowed to grow in the revelations and realizations that come in striving to DO as the Master instructs.

It IS the awakened man that can come to KNOW what it Truly means to “Love your enemies“; it IS this man who understands that one’s enemy IS his neighbor and it IS in such understanding that this man can “love thy neighbour as thyself“. The Apostle Paul puts these ideas together for us in his writings that we discussed several posts back. Speaking about this same precept that one should “love thy neighbour as thyself” he writes:

“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” (Romans 13:11).

There IS a dual message here in the apostle’s words; first that to Love as Jesus shows us IS tantamount to keeping ALL of the commandments and while the reasons for this ARE clearly evident, they ARE yet misconstrued and misapplied in the doctrines of men. We should try to see here that agape, in the right idea of the Great Commandment and the Golden Rule, IS seeing ALL men as one sees himself and in this interacting with ALL men as one would have others interact with him. It IS when one can DO this that this man will NO longer even harbor thoughts akin to those that Paul lists above. This IS how ALL things ARE accomplished in Love.

This reality comes to the man who strives. This reality of agape IS the Truth of “the wisdom that is from above” (James 3:17) which IS the revelations and the realizations that come to the man who strive to keep His words. This reality of agape results in the expression of this Truth, this Wisdom and this Love by this man who strives and this expression IS his understanding that ALL men ARE essentially “the children of your Father which is in heaven“, especially those who ARE yet lost in the miasma that IS the illusion and the glamour, the vanity according to Paul, in which they live.

It IS then the man who can see through this miasma, see past his nurturing and his doctrines, who then comes to be “awake out of sleep” which IS the second point of Paul’s message. And while it IS the doctrinal approach to see “the works of darkness” as the apostle’s list of Old Testament ideas ONLY, the reality IS that these works ARE ALL that IS contrary to the Truth that IS apape as the expression of everyman. Paul shows us this most simple idea saying “and if there be any other commandment” and in this we should see every word from the Master and, to be sure, every word on Love.

The “works of darkness” ARE the works of men who ARE NOT yet awakened to the Truth, men who DO NOT yet strive toward the Truth, men who ARE yet caught in the “the bondage of corruption” (Romans 8:21) from which they must escape and be free. And this being free IS to have “cast off the works of darkness“; this freedom IS to “put on the armour of light” which the apostle defines for us as to “put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof” (Romans 13:14). And this idea of “put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ” should be seen in the context of the Master’s words that bring us Truth and freedom as we read again in the trifecta and we should understand that these ARE “the armour of light“. Repeating our trifecta again we read:

• “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).

While the Christian world celebrates Easter, the True relevance of Jesus’ Life, death and resurrection go unnoticed and unheeded by the many millions who believe that they ARE saved into eternal Life in His Kingdom, that they ARE free and that they have the Presence of God in their lives based ONLY in their doctrines. The True relevance of Jesus Life, His death and His resurrection ARE NOT in the latter two but in the first….in His Life, and if we can understand this we can then better understand His words saying “the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63).

If we could but see the fundamental idea that it IS Jesus Life, His teachings and His example that ARE His purpose, we could then better understand that His death and His resurrection ARE but symbols showing that in His Life was the Divine Truth that IS God. But men and their doctrines DO NOT see this as they confound the Truth with their convenient doctrinal ideas of the atoning quality of His death on the cross and His defeat of Satan which IS the interpretation of many concerning His resurrection.

What IS missed IS the Truth that His words convey as men concentrate on the most physical aspects of His Life here in this world. The physical aspects ARE but symbols of the deep spiritual significance that underlies them. From His healing, to His feeding the multitudes, to His calming the sea and walking on the water, we should see the spiritual significance of which He Himself tells that “the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do“. The doctrines of men DO NOT see that in these words that come just before the third part of our trifecta, the idea of “He that believeth on me” (John 14:12), refers to the man who will:  accept and adopt His precepts and example as binding upon the life ⁴ as Vincent shows us.

And the third part of our trifecta defines for us just what “He that believeth on me” Truly means as Jesus puts ALL of the Truth of the Presence of God and men’s purported Love for God into the most simple terms saying “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“. In this we should see the folly of doctrines that DO NOT equate one’s Love for God and for the Master to one’s willingness to accept and adopt His precepts and example as binding upon the life.

If we can look at Jesus Life through the prism of His words and NOT through the doctrinally selective views of some physical aspects we can then understand His saying that “the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life“. And when we can understand His saying that “the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent me“, we can then see the singular message of Truth and Love that springs from the Godhead. There IS but one test of Truth and it IS NOT found in such ideas as transubstantiation, atonement, nor in other doctrinal ideas as being born again.

Jesus’ death and resurrection DO naught for the man who DOES NOT see past the doctrinal precepts, the nebulous doctrinal precepts, of faith and believing which ARE rendered from the much more certain ideas of pistis and pisteuo. Many millions across the world celebrate Jesus’ birth, His death and His resurrection but pay little attention to His Life, His words and His example which ARE the left for us in most clear detail. Most ALL hold on to their own sense of illusion and glamour as they separate themselves by their doctrinal precepts that ARE founded in a few sayings that ARE NOT seen in the context with which they ARE offered.

So many hold Jesus parabolic sayings above the clarity of His other words which we find in most of the Sermon on the Mount and the trifecta. So few see the Truth and the spiritual reality of His words on Love while holding themselves above others based in their doctrinal ideas that ARE based in their literal view of His words saying that “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). So many accept this parabolic idea literally while ignoring the context; the ignore as well the clarity of ideas such as “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me” which follow and explain how that “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” applies to men.

It IS NOT easy to go through our lists of ideas that show how that the doctrines of men have failed to show the Truth of Jesus words and their import in the lives of men and it IS at times like Easter that the doctrinal hypocrisy IS most evident. Men offer praise and worship regarding His death and His resurrection while they DO NOT see the ideas that these events symbolize; neither DO men see the relevance here of His words that tell us what they symbolize as He says to the man who KNOWS the Truth that “the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do“.

But this IS our Truth. Jesus tells us of and He shows us the reality of spiritual Power, a Power that we DO have inherently but without the pistis and the pisteuo that allows us to realize it and to use it. ALL of the apostle’s have some measure of realization of the Truth in the Presence of Jesus as they too work miracles, heal the sick and teach the masses, and in this we should be able to see that it IS NOT necessary to be perfect to achieve these things. We can clearly see that these ARE yet men in this world as the fullness of the Truth IS NOT yet clear to them, and this even at the end which we see in the questions of Thomas, Philip and Judas regarding His words.

To be sure, these apostles were among those who “hath my commandments, and keepeth them” and if we can see and understand this and then strive to keep His words over keeping our place as men, we too could wield such Power. This IS spiritual Power and this has naught to DO with anything carnal….this Power works ONLY in Love, in agape, as the Master teaches us this ideal. And this IS the True Easter message:

• “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another” (John 13:34).
• “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:35).
• “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you” (John 15:12).
• “These things I command you, that ye love one another” (John 158:17).

And this Love IS NOT between Christians or purported followers of the Lord as so many presume. These words DO NOT come from a God who sees divisions, these come from a God in “whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning“, a God “that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not” (James 1:17, 5); a God in whom “there is no respect of persons” (Colossians 3:25).

These words on Love as His commandment ARE Jesus personal appeal to His own and through them to us; an appeal to Love according to the Great Commandment and the Golden Rule. It IS in Love that Jesus died; it IS in Love that He resurrected; and most importantly it IS in Love that He lived among us to show us the Way to spiritual realization through finding the Truth and coming into the True Life in the Kingdom of God while here in this Earth. This IS the True Easter message.

HAPPY EASTER

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

Let the peace of God rule in your hearts