IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 162

YES, HE is Talking to YOU! (continued)

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

We left off yesterday with a comment regarding the nature of our subject verses in the Gospel of Matthew which is the only gospel in which these verses appear. Our comment was that Jesus is specifically telling us about speaking and this theme starts in the prior parable concerning the unpardonable sin, with which we started our view of the current subject, and goes through to the end of this series of sayings. For convenience our verses are repeated here again:

• The Parable of Speaking Well or the unpardonable sin which we have covered in some detail over the last several posts. “Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come“. 
• The sayings that we discussed in the last post and with which we start today: Either make the tree good, and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by his fruit. O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. 
• The last part of this series of sayings that we will get to today: But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified , and by thy words thou shalt be condemned” (Matthew 12:31-37).

Our final point yesterday was an important one in the understanding of these sayings which we can consider as a part of the Parable of Speaking Well. This complete parable on speaking as it is  found in the Matthew’s Gospel should, in the end, appear to us as one seamless saying by the Master which contains a number of interrelated messages. While Jesus is talking about what it is that we speak and the source of good and evil speaking being in our hearts, we should see the deeper message that is to speak one has to think or feel about a thing and then say it. The Master points us to the heart which we call the conscious personality; this is what and who we appear to be in this world. He speaks of good and evil treasure that comes from the heart or the personality consciousness and our idea here has to expand into what is not said. We have discussed this before, if fact it was one of our first posts in the series In the Words of Jesus and was the subtitle of parts 8 and 9. What is hidden in the Master’s words is the source of the good and the evil; He tells us all about this and He tells us, in many places, of how to find the Kingdom and experience the presence of God. It is up to us as men to connect these things and to focus our attention on the things that Jesus teaches to us and thereby find the source of the good and find in measure the “kingdom of God, and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:32).

Good is the flow of Love and of Wisdom that comes from the Soul, from the Christ Within, and imbues our consciousness with those qualities. Conversely, evil is the flow of the base elements of life in form, the forces and the powers of the lowest realms of emotion and selfish thought, which, if one is ‘caught up in them’ produces a conscious personality that exhibits that nature. Again, there is a infinite range of possibilities and combinations between the two extremes of perfect good and genuine evil resulting from one’s focus on either part plus the intensity of that focus and its steadfastness as well. This is a very complex issue but the curative action, as so much of the Master’s words tell us, is the steadfast focus on the things of the Kingdom of God.

Let us take our premise then regarding the first point above which is painted as the unpardonable sin. This is seen as relating to the actual speaking of evil against the Spirit of God by many and it is rather whitewashed by some parts of the church because of the severity that it professes. Our understanding however is much different; for us this is a caution to all that is based on the idea that to speak, one must think and for a thought there must be a source. In this relation then the source of a thought that is spoken out as blasphemy toward the Spirit of God is of the baser levels of world inspired thoughts and emotions. These are such that a man will cause the man to disconnect from any input of Soul Light and likely cause him to deny that there is anything but what he can see. This is unforgivable only because this man has shut himself off from the flow of Truth and Love which is the reality of Life; this conscious man likely does not know the difference nor does he care but, in the end of this life on Earth and in an illgotten afterlife, his state of being may become apparent to him. To speak this evil blasphemy with any real intent requires that a man be disconnected from the Source of the Good, the Beautiful and the True and this is the Master’s caution; if one reaches this point it is sore hard to come back.

Moving on to the second point we should see that the Master is here giving us the needed insight so as to understand the source of the good or the evil speaking and the nature or the good and the evil heart. He begins, as we said yesterday, with the idea of the tree which is the conscious personality of man. He does not say that the tree is either good or it is evil, He says one should make it one or the other and we can parallel this saying into another where the Master says “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24). Remember His word here is cannot; all attempts to do so are merely delusions and no delusion will come from the Soul. Ponder on this.

So He admonishes us to consciously be one or the other and shows us that which one we are can be identified by the fruit that we bear as men in form on this Earth; corrupt and worthless fruit or good fruit. There is likely that same type of range of values here but we should recognize by the Master’s words that to be accounted worthy one must be at the high end in all these things; in Jesus words this would be “…..perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).

Continuing on the Master tells us more clearly that if we are evil we cannot speak good, we can only then speak evil. This helps confirm our idea regarding the first point above and sets the stage for the next part of these sayings: “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh“. This is the nature of the Life of every man; there is no deviation from this and we should note that just like Jesus shows us cannot in the saying above, He is also telling us this Truth as a fact. This was also the idea behind the sayings of the Apostle James that we left off with yesterday; the tongue can and does cause most all of the harm in our lives and it is so difficult to control unless the flow of thoughts and emotion coming into our consciousness is from above and not from the world. And this is what the Master tells us next: “A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things“. Again the opposite poles are not to say that men must be either good or evil but that there is good and evil and in between is another of those ever existing infinite ranges. It should be every persons objective to be at or above the middle of this range; pure good places us into the Kingdom and the Presence of God, accounted worthy, and pure evil will, as we addressed above, put us in that state where exists that unpardonable sin, the waste of an incarnated Life. The Master tells us about Good saying: “there is none good but one, that is, God” (Mark 10:18); for evil we need only to see the idea of the devil and of Satan.

The thoughts that become the words that come out of our conscious personality, our heart as the Master says, come from somewhere; they can come as the flow of Light and Love and Wisdom and Truth from the higher self, the Soul, the Christ Within or they can com from the flow of selfish and lustful and fearful illusions from the lower self that is immersed in this world of form. Most of us likely know the ease with which the lower can impinge upon our consciousness, for the higher however, it requires our ardent focus and desire. We should understand also that for most of us our thoughts come from both and so, if we desire the Kingdom, we must be ever diligent to strive and to “make the tree good” and to serve the Master alone.

The next point that the Master teaches us on here is the idle word and there is some confusion regarding this idea. We have used this saying several times in our posts to show that there are no idle words uttered by the Master, that everything that He said has some meaning, but how does it affect us and what we say. Let us try to understand first what exactly this word may mean. The lexicon tells us of idle, from the Greek word argos, that it means free from labour, at leisure; lazy, shunning the labour which one ought to perform² while Strong’s tells us similar saying: idle, lazy; useless, ineffective, careless³. None of these ideas of idle can easily be referenced to words so we go to Vincent who tells us that in this context: the word is composed of  not and work. An idle word is a non-working word; an inoperative word. It has no legitimate work, no office, no business, but is morally useless and unprofitable⁴, which gives us a bit more understanding. While commentaries refer this saying back to the opening ideas regarding Jesus healing the man, casting out his demon, and the thoughts of the Pharisees regarding this as being from the devil, we should understand that there is more and that this more is a continuation of the teachings that Jesus gives us in the preceding verses as listed above. Accepting Vincent’s ideas on the meaning of idle we will add in what Webster’s says that idle means: a. Not employed; unoccupied with business; inactive; doing nothing. Slothful; given to rest and ease; averse to labor or employment; lazy; as an idle man; an idle fellow. Affording leisure; vacant; not occupied; as idle time; idle hours. Remaining unused; unemployed; applied to things; as, my sword or spear is idle. Useless; vain; ineffectual; as idle rage. Unfruitful; barren; not productive of good. Trifling; vain; of no importance; as an idle story; an idle reason; idle arguments. Unprofitable; not tending to edification. Idle differs from lazy; the latter implying constitutional or habitual aversion or indisposition to labor or action, sluggishness; whereas idle, in its proper sense, denotes merely unemployed. An industrious man may be idle, but he cannot be lazy. I”DLE, v.i. To lose or spend time in inaction, or without being employed in business¹. This is a rather long list and we show it because Webster’s, in their understanding, attributed only Unprofitable; not tending to edification to the saying in our subject verse and that looking through the other possible meanings we should be able to garner more.

Taking the Webster’s idea of Unprofitable; not tending to edification and Vincent’s thought that It has no legitimate work, no office, no business, but is morally useless and unprofitable we find some understanding of the Master’s teaching but can Jesus mean that for this, saying idle words, “they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment“. This depends of course on how one looks at these words and at the completion of the phrase which says “For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned“. Can we not see here that there can be some even idle words for which we are not condemned. So what do we take from this then? Simply, on the outer side be ever careful of our words. Under the great Comic Law of Cause and Effect which we know here as sowing and reaping, everything has an effect and so the Master tells us that for every thought and word there is a consequence. Putting this into the context of the sayings above it regarding the speaking of good and of evil, should we see here that this is another caution to watch what we think and what we say and to know where it is that any thought or word comes from? But He said this already and we know that He will not be using idle words while telling us that we should not. What other meaning can we come to? Looking at our understanding for the sayings above we should come to the idea of focus, on our ability to “make the tree good“, and to have “good treasure of the heart” so as to “bringeth forth good things“. These are the positive actions that precede our speech; they ensure the source of the thought and thereby the words.

Look now at the last entry from Webster’s: To lose or spend time in inaction. Is this not what most men are guilty of when it comes to the pursuit of the Presence of God which is the reality of our goal in this lifetime. We should remember here that we need to link the idea of a word to a thought just as we linked speech to thought and then the thought to the source. What then is idleness but not attending to things in earnest,  and not doing as He tells us above that we should do: “make the tree good and his fruit good; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt“. We can also liken this idea of idle to a car; letting the car idle serves no real purpose, one goes nowhere and accomplishes nothing but still expends the fuel, the energy, to do so. And to this end the Master is telling us that we should see this life in a similar way and that we will be judged by what we say, what we think and feel and that it is by these that we are justified or condemned; not by idle words only by simply by thy words. The ideas of judgement and condemnation are hard words to understand except in the doom and gloom pictures of hell and damnation and we will get these in some future post but for now the understanding we have should be that words and speech are thoughts manifest to others and we need to be ever careful of how we use them and where they come from. And, knowing the source of the Good, the Beautiful and the True, we should strive toward that source and His Presence and lastly, that idleness will not get us there.

This is our Parable of Speaking Well.

Note on the Quote of the Day