Love is the Fulfilling of the Law
ON LOVE; PART XXIII
ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•Α
GoodWill IS Love in Action
ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•ΑΩ•Α
“But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed . Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justifiedby faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Galatians 3:23-29).
We ended yesterday’s essay with some comments on our thoughts on the Soul that IS man as it is reflected in the second stanza of the Affirmation of the Disciple which has been a part of our daily work now for several weeks. In the prior post we addressed the first stanza which is spoken by the disciple or the aspirant in regard to the Trinity that he IS and the OUR God IS. Relating this to our chart we can see the Light, the Love and the Power or Will of God as it is reflected in the Affirmation along with the correspondences to this same Trinity that is man. Summarizing this we can see that the correspondences account for the existence of man in the IMAGE OF GOD:
- The Father corresponds to the Spirit of man and the potency of both is the Will and the Power of Life itself; in the affirmation we see this as a point of fire within the Fiery Will of God. God IS and man, the True man as the Spirit IS as well.
- The Son, the Christ, corresponds to the Soul of man and to his reality as the Christ Within which are the same reality; the potency here is of Love and this can be seen cosmically as the ordered attraction of ALL manifestation and the Unity in which ALL works. In regard to our personal view of God we should see the Love that is expressed by the Christ as the insignia of the fact that “God is love” (1 John 4:18). Realizing that the Father and the Son are ever ONE should help us to understand the ideas presented in the gospels, especially John’s, and allow us to grasp the idea that the Master, the Christ, brought this Love to its realization in the Earth. The Apostle Paul tells us “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9) and the Master Himself tells us more than once that “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30). When we look upon these sayings with the reality of our own being in His image we should be able to glimpse the larger reality and see that as the Master expressed this Love that IS God through His form on the Earth, so must we be able to and are destined to do likewise. In our affirmation we make claim that we, as Souls, are as HE IS, as steams of Love within the ONENESS of God who IS Love.
- The Holy Spirit is the ONE closest to us as men in form although this reality is not from a perspective of space; this is True as well cosmically as we should see that the Holy Spirit is the Activity of the Love and the Power of God in form. We should understand here that this is not a direct reference to the physical world and the physical body nor of the more subtle attributes of the personality, the emotional and mental. That man has emotions and mind should be an indication of the existence of emotion and mind in the subtle realms of the manifest universe and of the Earth as well but this is a subject for another time. The Activity of the Love and Power of God in form should be seen as True in the realm of the Soul which is the Kingdom of God and is a state of being that we ALL, as Souls, ‘enjoy‘ and this for the lack of a better word. It is the Soul, the True man that shares his Life and lends his consciousness to the form and the personality and from this perspective the Activity of the Love (of the Soul) and the Power (of the Spirit) are functioning within the world of form and thus is the Holy Spirit active in the Earth Life of a man. This activity of God is called in our Affirmation the Light of God and this is the same Light that the Master tells us of saying: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). The good works then are the activity of the Christ Within and this activity is Light that ALL can see, it is the reality of the Holy Spirit.
Can we see that in each Aspect we are as God and that we are part and parcel of the Awesome Creation which both IS God and is of God? Do we understand that this is not the physical but the spiritual and although this spiritual does for a time work through the physical from the perspective of the man in form, it should not be identified as such; the True man is the Soul as the manifestation of Spirit? Can we see also that it is the Soul, the True man, that can look forward to and expect to be “delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:20-21) which can and will happen at such a time as one can say with the Master that “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). And so we have our chart and the reality of our Affirmation.
|
Aspect of God |
Potency |
Expressed as Fire |
Aspect of Man |
|
Father |
Will or Power |
Electric Fire |
Spirit or Life |
|
Son, The Christ |
Love and Wisdom |
Solar Fire |
Soul or Christ Within |
|
Holy Spirit |
Light or Activity |
Fire by Friction |
Life Within the Form |
I am a point of light within a greater Light. I am a strand of loving energy within the stream of Love divine. I am a point of sacrificial Fire, focused within the fiery Will of God. And thus I stand I am a way by which men may achieve. I am a source of strength, enabling them to stand. I am a beam of light, shining upon their way. And thus I stand. And standing thus, revolve And tread this way the ways of men, And know the ways of God. And thus I stand.
The saying at the head of this essay is an expansion on the verse that was the Verse of the Day from biblegateway.com a few days ago. In reading this again it seemed to go well with our topics as brought out in the Affirmation of the Disciple that we have been discussing and for this reason we will try to use this today to better tie our ideas on the Soul to the words of the Affirmation as our own understanding. Of course what we are going to say is a departure from the doctrine of the churches who see this all in a very different light.
Of paramount importance here is the idea of faith as it is understood in this context which is summarily similar to our understanding of the ideas of faith and of KNOWING; this rather than faith as an emotional exercise of the mind. This is not meant to belittle anyone’s ideas on faith as this is a far reaching word to be sure, but the faith that the Master speaks of is at times much more that the most capable of men is able to achieve as it is the ultimate of KNOWING that one can move the mountain. We have discussed this mountain moving faith several times over the course of our essays and have linked faith with the related understanding of believing as both are of the KNOWING reality of the few. In faith we say that there is KNOWING and in believing we say that there is the ultimate of reliance on that KNOWING and it is in the combination of these two that we find the heart of the disciple. Here we find the Apostles Peter and Paul and likely the others as well; here we find men who have the fullness of the Christ Within as their expression in the world of form. We must understand that these Soul Powers, like most ALL else, come to us by degree and it is only when we are at the fullness of them that we have those abilities that the Master tells us we will have which are seen in His words:
- “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do” (John 14:12). Note the force with which these words come to us and yet the reality of them is missing in doctrine. Perhaps because of the last part of this verse as it appears in most bible versions which add: “because I go unto my Father“. We should remember that the chapter and verse breakup of the bible is not the convention of the writers but was added later for clarity and reference; and this is of course done by the hand of man. In our understanding of the reality of our relationship with the Master we KNOW that there is no criteria for His leaving as the reason for our several abilities. There is the criteria of “He that believeth on me” and this is of the utmost importance and not in the terms of doctrine but rather in the reality of keeping His words and following Him. Two points of importance to us here:
- First, we come back to Vincent’s words of explanation on the idea of believing as it is framed here; he says: To believe in, or on, is more than mere acceptance of a statement. It is so to accept a statement or a person as to rest upon them, to trust them practically; to draw upon and avail one’s self of all that is offered to him in them. Hence to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ is not merely to believe the facts of His historic life or of His saving energy as facts, but to accept Him as Savior, Teacher, Sympathizer, Judge; to rest the soul upon Him for present and future salvation, and to accept and adopt His precepts and example as binding upon the life4. This from Vincent paints this idea of believing as it should be understood; to believe on or to believe in the Master is to treat Him as such and as Lord and in so doing to follow His precepts which are also the precepts of one’s own Christ Within. It is in this ONLY that we can come to that place of discipleship which is but the stepping point for being among those who can be capable of doing as He has done. This we see in graphic detail in the properly perceived Life of Peter.
- Second we should see that in the reality that we state above regarding the placement of the verse numbers, that there were no hard and fast rules but rather a breaking apart according to the doctrines that had been established and the thoughts of the fifteenth and sixteenth century bible scholars. Based upon these verses, our general understanding of the Master’s and the apostle’s words are as the phrases that are presented which carry the thoughts to us in a verse by verse way. In our saying above the addition of the ending part of the verse can lead a man away from a True understanding of the Master’s words that tell us if we believe on Him that we can do these works also. These ending words are moved to the next verse in at least one bible version, the Douay-Rheims Bible, which was the first official Catholic version of the bible. We believe that this is where these words do belong, as a part of the next verse thereby leaving the saying to stand alone as we have it above. Doctrine is split on the idea of works in this verse with some admitting of the works and others aligning them with the ministry only but all expressing opinion as fact which is much the same as we do. It is in these types of conflicting fact that the our ability to discern the reality of the Wisdom from above is of paramount importance and in this we should KNOW that there is no room for a sense of self (read James 3:17 and our comments in In the Words of Jesus parts 322-331). In the same vein, we should remember the words of John who tells us that we need no one to teach us as we have the ultimate teacher within; he says “But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him” (1 John 2:27). We should ever remember that it is a very personal thing, one’s communion and communication with his own Soul, his Christ Within, and while we KNOW that we can have this conclusive testimony from within, we also KNOW that we have the means of measuring its reality; we should ever remember that in relation to the things of God there will never be any sense of self.
- “Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done” (Matthew 21:21). As in the previous verse, we do discuss these words in many of our essays and this because these ideas are central to our right understanding of the divinity which we are as Souls and it is when the fullness of this divinity is expressed through form that we can be seen in the reality of John’s words saying that “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” (John 4: 16:17). Here we have the assurance of our prior saying that “greater works than these shall he do” in speaking of one who “believeth on” the Master. Look here at the criteria and try to see that they are the same; to one who believes on the Master, who does His will and keeps His words, will come the power of greater works and, to one who “dwelleth in love” can come the reality of being “as he is” here and now. Can we see the relationship of Love to His Will and His words? We have chosen this particular entry of the parabolic teaching of the mustard seed and the mountain because it contains for us both faith and believing and here we KNOW the True meaning of KNOWING that a thing will be done as the mustard seed KNOWS that it will be a tree and doubting not, which is, as we say above, the ultimate of reliance on that KNOWING. We have discussed this much over the last weeks as part of our essays on faith and believing which we have yet to finish of of which we can count this as a part.
We started out with a selection from Galatians and remained stuck here on the ideas of faith and believing as we tried to introduce our ideas on these important words from Paul. We will get back to this in the next post and should try to take away from today’s essay that sense of ONENESS with the Christ and with God that allows us to understand that we are as He IS and that His teachings to us on the possibilities that lie before us are True and should be received in the clarity with which they are offered. We end today with this from the Bhagavad~Gita which explains these realities from a different perspective:
Thou carriest within thee a sublime Friend whom thou knowest not. For God dwells in the inner part of every man, but few know how to find Him. The man who sacrifices his desires and his works to the Beings from whom the principles of everything stem, and by whom the Universe was formed, through this sacrifice attains perfection. For one who finds his happiness and joy within himself, and also his wisdom within himself is one with God. And, mark well, the soul which has found God is freed from rebirth and death, from old age and pain, and drinks the water of Immortality.—Bhagavad~Gita
We leave again our sayings on faith and believing which we hope to get back to in the next post.
- “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matthew 18:6).
- “The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven, or of men? And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say unto us, Why did ye not then believe him?…..For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him” (Matthew 21:25, 32).
- “Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. Behold, I have told you before. Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, he is in the secret chambers; believe it not…….” (Matthew 24:23-26).
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.
We leave our Quote of the Day again for today. In this is the reality of discipleship and the selflessness, the willing selflessness that is its hallmark.
“He who faces the light of His Soul and stands within its radiance is blinded to the issues of the world of men; he passes on the lighted way to the Kingdom of God. But he who feels the urge to pass that way, yet loves his brother on the darkened path, revolves upon the pedestal of light and turns the other way.”
“He faces towards the dark and then the seven points of light within himself transmit the outward streaming light, and lo! the face of those upon the darkened way receives that light. For them, the way is not so dark. Behind the warriors—twixt the light and dark—blazes the light of the Kingdom itself.“**
We previously posted this saying in In the Words of Jesus part 367 and did so in conjunction with the Master’s teaching on the idea that “But many that are first shall be last; and the last first” (Mark 10:31) and His teaching about the mustard seed where, in Luke’s Gospel, he says: “So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do” (Luke 17:5-10)”. In this context we say about the words above: Remembering that the Master is speaking to His disciples in both instances above and both are, in our view, explanatory of the nature of the disciple; that he will accomplish what he has to do, his duty if you will, but will continue on in the service of the Lord and give his ALL in service to his fellowmen. There an ancient aphorism which states this truth in a different way and on which we have taken the liberty of rendering in a more understandable language;
- 4 Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
- ** Discipleship in the New Age – Volume II by Alice A Bailey; © 1955 by Lucis Trust
