ON LOVE; PART DCL
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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.
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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).
Over the last few essays we discussed the Apostle James’ closing statement if we can call it that from his epistle which we see as a short treatise on the Way of the disciple. Overall James points out the many perils to accomplishing the goal of discipleship while showing us as well the nature of the True disciple. He shows us for example the peril of succumbing to temptation as he says that “every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death” and then offers us his apostolic insight by telling us: “Do not err, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:14-17). Here he shows us that part that IS missed by the man in the world, by the aspirant and the disciple who yet struggles in duality; he shows us that whatsoever we may think IS the Truth of what we desire to have or to think or to feel in the world, it IS of the world…..the Good things come from God. And he sets the stage here for his later words on Wisdom which he begins earlier in his talk on temptation and ends with his words on the Wisdom from above. In the long reality of James’ words we can see the depth of his point, that ALL temptations ARE NOT of the material kind, they ARE NOT only of the gross things of the world, but they are the thoughts and the attitudes which he goes on to speak on as well. And the Good comes from God, from above in the Wisdom from above; from one’s own God Within which we understand as the Soul.
Here we should see the genius of James’ writing as he uses obscure words and phrases and speaks in such a way that one must Truly focus upon his ideas and be focused upon the Truth of God to properly understand him. While this is not much different than the parabolic style of the Master, it IS more direct and blunt and seemingly accusative as he takes an ‘if the shoe fits’ perspective regarding many of the perils that face the man who strives. And he offers us encouragement and hope as well in his words; in the midst of his discussion on temptation he offers to the man who can see the Truth that “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him” (James 1:12). In this we should see the end goal for the disciple and this despite that he may succumb to temptations here and there; so long as he remains in that state of duality, so long as he IS double minded, the temptations continue to come and it IS in the end, when he finally sees the fullness of the Truth, that he can be seen as the one who has endured. For us there IS NO actual crown as is thought by some and this IS NOT eternal Life that is thought by others; this IS the accomplishment of our goal; and not as a prize nor a reward but as a new sense of discipleship that IS found in overcoming….this IS the Kingdom of God.
This IS the nature of the apostle’s message which IS a series of intertwined ideas that IS likely intended to show how that ALL things are related from the perspective of the man who would be accounted worthy of the Kingdom of God. We should remember that as we arrived at this closing statement we were able to see the idea temptation as it pervaded James’ remarks on patience and here again we should note how that he shows us the goal and the perils and he offers us the encouragement and the hope that we can endure. We should note as well how that the apostle goes to extra lengths to correct the thoughts of the reader regarding issues that were NOT yet seen in their True Light and which ARE NOT yet understood by many. James offers us the reality and the Truth of Love from the Master’s perspective in his words about the “royal law” and he shows us how that NOT seeing this clearly and NOT DOING so IS as much a sin as IS anything that a man can do; it IS in this reality that we are shown the fullness of the idea of sin….that it IS NOT the gross offences ONLY but IT is the reality of a man’s focus upon the things of the self and the world. This idea of sin IS a difficult thing to understand as the Truth has been obnubilated by the reasoning of men and the doctrines of the churches but James’ tying sin to one’s failure to Love universally as the Master teaches can easily awaken everyman who can see past his own reasoning and doctrines to the Truth.
When we read James words that say “If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well: But if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors. For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all” (James 2:8-10) without such awakening however, a man will NOT see the Truth that sin IS sin and while there may be deeper ramifications of some over others, from the spiritual perspective the root cause and the result ARE the same. Sin IS the wrong focus of a man upon the things of the world and the interests of the self in the world and in sin the Soul has little opportunity to express his will. In this we can try to see the reality of the Ten Commandments as well of many of the ancillary commandments of the Old Testament. These commandments were written and intended to control the physical aspects of Life in the world, what a man could and could NOT do, in his limited understanding and overreaching superstition and emotional response to Life. In the Master’s dispensation however these commandments ARE largely replaced by Love as IS attested to by James here and by the Apostle Paul who so clearly says “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Galatians 5:14). Unfortunately these words have never been properly understood.
James speaks on Love to those in his day where even the aspirant and the disciple did not see clearly and we should see this in the reality that this IS his target audience. At the same time his words ARE NOT yet understood and this even by those who have taken ‘spiritual’ authority in composing doctrines over the centuries and in the churches yet today and in this we should see that his instruction IS timeless. The greatest of ALL failures of religion IS in NOT teaching the Truth of the Master’s words on Love, on the universality of Love and on how that in Love ALL things are accomplished. And James weaves this theme of Love seamlessly into the totality of his words as he leaves off speaking about the idea of “pure religion“, and hints at what this IS as he tells us that “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world” (James 1:27). It IS in this idea of “the fatherless and widows” that there was a part of the Jew’s responsibility under the law that we see the idea of having NO “respect to persons“; caring for them became taking advantage of by many as we can understand from the Master’s own words to the scribes and the Pharisees saying “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation” (Matthew 23:14). And it IS in the reality that a man should “keep himself unspotted from the world” that we see the Truth of sin from the perspective of the Truly spiritual man.
And we should see the reality of pretense in the Master’s words here about widows and understand that their children ARE among the fatherless. In James’ words we should see this same pretense as this IS built into his sayings on “pure religion” and on the reality that if one’s expression IS NOT True, if it is as the “long prayer” of the scribe and the Pharisee, that “this man’s religion is vain” (James 1:26). Can we see how that these ideas ALL work together? We should note here that these idea on “pure religion” follow upon the James most profound words as he says: “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves” (James 1:22) and we should understand the relationship here between this deception and pretense. In the deeper aspects of this idea we can uncover the reality of illusion and glamour as in both the deception and the pretense most men, then and today, believe that they ARE doing right as they are wound up on their own sense of doctrine instead of the True intent of the law and the words of the Master.
From these ideas on Love that ARE preceded by the reality of “pure religion“, the apostle goes on to speak to us about faith and works. And today we should try to see how that in addition to our previous idea that this combination is spoken against in those days as it IS now, there IS another reality at play. In the idea that the men of that day DO NOT see the Truth of the law through the clouds created out of their own doctrine, and our understanding that this IS True yet today, we should be able to understand that such faith without works ARE the same pretense, the same deception as there IS in the previous ideas of only believing oneself to be a DOER and of one seeming to himself to be religious. In this we should try to understand that James point becomes that if one so believes that according to his doctrine he IS righteous then that righteousness must be evident in works of faith. These works per force would include caring for the “fatherless and widows in their affliction“, these works would include that one IS among the “doers of the word” and these works of faith would include the essence of Love, the essence of the “royal law“.
This is a view of the web of Truth that IS woven into the apostle’s words as an almost seamless treatise on the Way of the disciple and these words, plus ALL of his other sayings, bring us to the True understanding of his closing statement which IS that it IS by our enduring and working patience that we will produce the “precious fruit“. We CAN NOT wait for this fruit, we must work for it and this work must be founded in Love; and the objective of this work must be to keep His words. We must work through our affliction and we must work through the temporal satisfaction that we may find in the things of the world; and we must work through our periods of weakness with the resolve found in the Light of our own Souls as we pray, as we commune with our own divine nature, for added Light and for added strength. We should understand that the strength and the light DO come by a degree proportionate with our focus and with our own True sense of righteousness as we can KNOW it by our being a DOER of the word, as we can see in the works of our faith and as we can measure in our being untainted by the world. ALL of this IS then the point of James’ next words which we read again as:
“Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth her fruit. Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him; Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins” (James 5:17-20).
We should see the idea of passion in a spiritual way if that IS possible and we should see as well that here again we have a rather obscure Greek word. Vincent tells us that: Of like passions (ὁμοιοπαθὴς); Only here and Acts 14:15. There is some danger of a misunderstanding of this rendering, from the limited and generally bad sense in which the word passions is popularly used. The meaning is rather of like nature and constitution. Rev. puts nature in margin, which would be better in the text 4. Can we see the point here? That it IS in James’ audience of like minded aspirants and disciples to whom he relates Elias; that he IS similar in nature to men whose focus is upon God and NOT that he IS similar to other men generally. James shows us here the available Power of the Soul in the world through the needed level of righteousness and communion.
We must understand the apostles reference to Elias, or Elijah in Hebrew, in the context of the history of the Kings of Egypt and how that Elijah lived in the time of Ahab the King of whom we read that “Ahab made a grove; and Ahab did more to provoke the LORD God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel that were before him” (1 Kings 16:33). In these days of the prophets and the stories of the history of the Jews, there ARE many strange things happening and many that show against the Truth of the Love of God, the Love that IS God, and this IS unfortunate. The problem here IS in the view that Jehovah IS God, the Supreme Lord of ALL things, and this view is founded in and aided by the language and the translations of the ancient Jews much as the misrepresentations of Christ ARE viewed by the doctrinal Christian view. That Elijah did what IS said IS likely True and that he did so in the Light of his own Soul whose view of God was clear IS also True; and, if we can understand the personage of Jehovah as a an Aspect of God who speaks and acts in relation to the Jews and the times, we can likely see ALL this with greater clarity. There IS NO other way to reconcile our God of Love to the angry and jealous Jehovah in the times of the Kings of Israel. The Nation of Israel needed to learn the lesson that IS brought to them by Moses whose view of Jehovah is likely as clear as Jesus’ view of the Father and, as the history of the Jews before and after the captivity shows, this lesson was NOT Truly learned. This grand experiment if you will of trying to change the ways of the people for their New Age in those days is essentially a failure; not because of the teaching but because of the student, the Nation of Israel as a whole, which IS brought into captivity by the Assyrians and the Babylonians and which remains under foreign rule through the days of the Christ.
Here again, as a nation, the Jews fail to see the Truth in the promised Messiah and it IS to the progressive individual who has broken away from the national climate of doctrine that the Apostle James IS speaking.
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 Chris.t |
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 Quote of the Day is the antithesis of glamour and illusion. In this mantram are the thoughts about ourselves and our brothers in the world that can diffuse those forces that hold a man in the world of things and prevent his spiritual progress.
Mantram of Unification
The sons of men are one and I am one with them.
I seek to love, not hate;
I seek to serve and not exact due service;
I seek to heal, not hurt.
Let pain bring due reward of light and love.
Let the Soul control the outer form, and life and all events,
And bring to light the love that underlies the happenings of the time.
Let vision come and insight.
Let the future stand revealed.
Let inner union demonstrate and outer cleavages be gone.
Let love prevail.
Let all men love.
The Mantram of Unification is a meditation and a prayer that at first affirms the unity of all men and the Brotherhood of Man based on the Fatherhood of God. The first stanza sets forth several truly Christian ideals in Unity, Love, Service and Healing. The second stanza is a invocation to the Lord and to our own Souls asking that from the pain (if there can truly be any) incurred in focusing on the Spirit and not the world will come Light and Love into our lives and that we begin to function as Souls through our conscious personalities. We ask that the spiritual control of our lives will bring to light for us the Love that underlies world events; a Love that the world oriented man will not see working out behind the scenes and also that the Love that we bring forth, individually and as a world group, can be seen by all and ultimately in all. Finally, in the last stanza we ask for those things that are needed for Love to abound. Vision and insight so that we can direct our attention properly; revelation of the future in the sense that all can see the Power of Love in the world; inner union so that we do not fall back into the world’s ways, that we faint not; and that a sense of separation, the antithesis of brotherhood, ends as we know it today. Let Love Prevail, Let All Men Love.spiritual control of our lives will bring to light for us the Love that underlies world events; a Love that the world oriented man will not see working out behind the scenes.
Let the peace of God rule in your hearts!
- 4 Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888
