IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 288

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON GOD; Part LXXIII

We began yesterday with a discussion on the Fourth Chapter of the Apostle John’s First Epistle as it follows upon the Easter topic of the death and the Resurrection of the Lord and these being our lesson on the way to follow Him into the greater things and into being like Him. This brought us to that saying by the apostle that saying that we use so much “as he is , so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17) and then led us to our discussion of the entirety of this chapter. Repeating it here for clarity and coloring the parts that we covered yesterday:

“Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error. Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.  There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment . He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him, because he first loved us. If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also” (1 John 4:1-21).

We split the last verse that we covered and, although we did so unintentionally, it appears that a purpose is served in so doing. We should remember that there are no chapters and verses in the original text and the these divisions are the inventions of man and correspond to the basic philosophies and doctrines of the time. The transition from the Third Chapter to the Fourth that we discussed yesterday is an example of such a break and it is unfortunate that the majority of readers no longer read these ideas together. Of similar nature is the break between the Twelfth and the Thirteenth Chapters of the Apostle Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians that we recently discussed; there the apostle is speaking of the Gifts of the Spirit and then of Love. Many see the Twelfth Chapter as of great importance in their ‘walk with the Lord’ and they do seek to gain these gifts and many miss the apostles point that these gifts are good and one should desire them but there is a better way to the Lord and that way is Love. In a similar turn is our text today as a continuation of yesterday; in the last post we were concerned with the portrayal of the ideas of believing and thereby being of God and we noted that the message in these first six verses is that we must discern what it is that we believe and follow and that this is a combination of those inner forces of the Good, the Beautiful and the True versus the forces of the world at large as well as those same inner forces versus what may be taught and preached as the word of God but which in reality is not. In doing this we tried to position John’s words so as to understand that he is speaking to a specific audience of believers, not believers in thought only but believers in fact as we saw in the transition from the last verse of the Third Chapter which speaks of “….he that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us” (1 John 3:24). It is then the idea of this Spirit that is carried forward and about which the apostle offers his cautions to the reader concerning what they believe as men enmeshed in the conscious duality of Life in form as well as what they may believe from what it is that they hear. We should understand here also that the idea of being of God, should be seen as in the same Light as we see believe on and it is surprising that none of the commentators that we generally read give us this. This could be because it is used in these sayings as a result rather than a cause and we can make a strong case that these ideas can go both ways. For example when the apostle tells us that “Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God“, we can take this as it appears, that if we confess this we are of God; however, does it not ring even Truer to say that one that is of God will  “confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh” because he will know this in his heart and from the Christ Within. This is much like saying that if we follow the Master and keep His words it is because we are His disciples rather than to see the Truth that we become His disciples by following Him and Keeping His words.

These same ideas are at play in the last verses that we discussed in part and will finish here; these verses say in their entirety that: “They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them.We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error“. While remembering that our understanding of this is that ALL are essentially of God as Souls and Spirit we should recognize that John is speaking to the man in form and in the world who is to be seen as of God when the Life of the Christ Within is flowing through his personality appearance. We departed from this perspective yesterday only to show the inherent ideas in John’s leading statement that “Ye are of God, little children” and his following sayings on the Christ Within, are that these pertain to ALL men and are not qualified by believing and following. John then goes from this generic statement on the nature of man to the ideas in our current verse thereby separating the the follower of the Christ from the non follower. We should see that John takes a harder line than this idea of following versus not following and this is likely because of the religious and political climate in that day where for the Jew religion was a way of Life and that this new breed of believers in Christ were rebels against the status quo; the non follower could be seen then as an antagonist against the follower, as an antichrist. We should remember that before the Master’s presence with these people and His teachings that all could be considered to be in the camp of the non believer; in other words they were unified in what they believed. We should see here that those who become followers were changed by what they saw and heard from the Master which resonated within and caused them to see and hear their own Christ Within and to change; those who become antagonists were not struck by what they saw and heard and were not moved within because their attachment to the world and their reliance on their current religious practices were greater than was their willingness to see the Light. Do we see the idea that we presented regarding being of God, from the new and Christian perspective, as being the criteria that causes one to ‘confess’ the Master and that this is the product of believing the Spirit of God, the voice of one’s own Christ Within, which is an essential part of True discipleship? We should say here before we move on that the idea here of antichrist is not necessarily an evil term; it is rather a term for those that are antagonistic against the teachings of the Master. Many of these Jews were, and likely still are, as convinced of the rightness of their religious views as were and are the Christians. It is a Truth that if the Jew, or one of any religious orientation whatsoever, follows the TEACHINGS of the Master regarding Love and the forsaking of the material world for the world of the Spirit, he will be as much of a disciple of the Christ as is the True Christian disciple which term is meant to define the same ideas of one who follows the TEACHINGS of the Master regarding Love and the forsaking of the material world for the world of the Spirit.

We have gone rather long on this but it is important to understand that the idea of ALL spiritual progress is in how we conduct our lives once we begin to focus on the Christ and the Christ Within and how willing a man is to forsake his claim to the things of the world, physical, emotional and mental, and this is the basic idea that we should be reading in these words by the apostle. We must rightly discern the source of the thoughts and the feelings upon which we act and we must know at the same time that if the motive of any action is to the self in the world it is likely not in the line with the idea of being of God .While so many in the church will deny the validity of this statement, all that one needs to do to verify it is to read the words of the Master on Love and on discipleship. We come now to the last part of the Sixth Verse which we left off yesterday:

• “Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error“. Commentary relates this saying to the former that we discussed yesterday and which is shown above as these verses in their entirety. An example of their understanding can be seen in this from The Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible⁸ : Hereby–( 1 John 4:2-6 ); by their confessing, or not confessing, Jesus; by the kind of reception given them respectively by those who know God, and by those who are of the world and not of God. spirit of truth–the Spirit which comes from God and teaches truth. spirit of error–the spirit which comes from Satan and seduces into error⁸. This understanding is of course steeped in doctrine and relates the whole of the matter to whether one is confessing, or not confessing that the Master is come. As doctrine this feeds the ideas of the church that it is ONLY through Jesus that one can be ‘saved’. Our reality is of course much different and this part of the idea of the confession that “Jesus Christ is come in the flesh” is in fact limited to those people in that day as we say above; these people, especially those who were inclined toward the religious Life, were divided between believers and non believers of that which was happening around them. Getting back to the nature of our saying here, can we see that this might be one that is leading up to the next of John’s thoughts rather that the ending of the last? or, can we only see this as it is painted above in relation to confessiing and not confessing the presence of the Christ? Vincent tells us that the word rendered as hereby in this verse is used only in this place and means ‘from this‘ as compared to the common usage elsewhere that means ‘in this‘⁴. Vine’s gives us this same idea saying that: Notes: (1) This translates the phrase en toutq, lit., “in this,” 1 Cor. 4:4; 1 John 2:3,5; 3:16,19,24; 4:2,13; 5:2 (RV, “hereby,” AV, “by this”). (2) In 1 John 4:6, AV, ek toutou, lit., “out of this,” i.e., in consequence of this, is rendered “hereby” (RV, “by this”)⁶. Now seeing that we have here a unique word can we also see how it may be related more to what follows that to what is past? Let us try this:
1. “Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error. Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.  He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love“.
2. “They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error“.

We will not go further than this today but will take some time here to further analyse the words we have here in this verse. We should note here that most all commentary and most all translations are done from the perspective of some particular doctrinal belief system and in the current model of Christianity the doctrines lean towards those ideas that man can more easily accomplish. Our primary example of this is that the words of the epistles are used more for the the development and the teaching of doctrine than are the words of the Master that the epistles are likely intended to support. I am trying to carefully select my words here as to not outwardly offend anyone or any group and this is a difficult task in the light of what the Master teaches and which some doctrines change and ignore. So much of the current doctrines of the churches is wrapped into the idea of believing and confessing and so little is intended to teach the world the reality of the Master’s own teachings on Love and on the idea of “seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33). Again so much of the teachings and the current doctrines of the churches is to do with the benefits to a man here on this Earth as regards plenty and abundance of the things of the world and so little is to teach the reality of His teachings on the Truth of discipleship and the True ideas of how one can Love Christ which He says is “If a man love me, he will keep my words” (John 14:23). There are really no shortcuts and the Master boldly tells us of the difficulty in following Him yet, through the illusion, glamour and deception of the world, we have found so many in the doctrines and the dogma that we subscribe to. This is, in a nutshell, the purpose of this blog and of our varied blog posts; to lift the fog of illusion and to dispel the surreal nature of glamour and, in doing this to stop the reign of deception in the world today. This is not for everybody but if a man is choosing the spiritual path then this must be his focus; away from the ways of the world and toward the ways of God.

We will continue with our thoughts on this chapter from 1 John in the next post.

Just a note here on our choice of words above saying this is, in a nutshell, the purpose of this blog; can we see here how this can be related to our thoughts on John’s use of the word rendered as herby. Our saying goes in both directions; backward and forward. Backward as the culmination of our thoughts on illusion, glamour and deception and doctrine and forward as the very definition of our saying. Can we see these same ideas in the words of the apostle?

Note on the Quote of the Day