"The
word "evil" means "to veil"... All destructive behavior is born of our
failure to see our divinity and to accept our divinity... I'm not a
Christian and neither was Jesus, but the whole point behind forgiveness
of sins is to remove this veil... this obstacle keeping us from loving
our self... Most Christians completely miss the whole point of the
Gospel entirely... they go on hating who they are and creating
destruction as a result... The word Gospel means good news and yet most
Christians have found a way to turn it into bad news."
It is interesting to see the word evil meaning "to veil", which
hinders a person from seeing one's own divinity. It may explain why Jesus described the Jewish generation as evil because they failed to see their own divine nature. Jesus
may have tried to unveil their eyes by telling them that their true
identity is the light of the world. Perhaps the law had blinded their
eyes to see the truth of who they are because they had thought they had
to do something in order to become righteous.
I am thinking that in Luke 11 when Jesus
described whether their eye is single or evil, he could be referring to
whether their inner eye/vision is veiled to see their own divinity.
34 The light of
the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is
full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also isfull
of darkness.
35 Take heed
therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness.
36 If thy whole
body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the
whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give
thee light.
(Luke 11:34-36)
To
me, darkness simply means ignorance of one's own divinity. Jesus came to
bring light to dispel people's ignorance of their divine identity, hence
darkness is overcome by light. Sin in the Jewish context also refers to
ignorance or amnesia of one's true identity and forgiveness of sin means
unveiling of one's true identity, as pointed out by the post.
Back then, the Jews and Pharisees failed to see their own divinity and hated
themselves and became destructive, to the point they tried to kill Jesus too.
Similarly, as noted in the post, many people in Christian circles fail to see
the gospel or good news of their own divinity and so they hate themselves and
others, seeing themselves as sinful and unworthy.
Even though they may be taught to see Jesus as their covering with the robe of
righteousness, and know they are crowned with glory, the underlying message
they get from institutional church is that there is nothing good in them and
only Jesus is their righteousness. But that is the old covenant mindset
because the Jews put themselves under the law. The law is the one that
condemns, not Jesus/God. God has all the while seen everyone as innocent and
perfect/complete because he/she/it made us in divine image and declared us
very good.
The gospel of inclusion therefore unveils our mind to see the truth of who we
are and see our original glory in the face of Christ our true identity. We
will have single eye that sees our body as being full of light, knowing we
are the light of the world.
"Make
the unknown Christ known within yourself by seeing Him born a second
time as the ever-new, ever-increasing joy of your daily deep meditation."
Paramahansa Yogananda
It is interesting to see the expression "seeing Him born a
second time" as it reminds me of Jesus' words about being born again.
Maybe to be born again symbolically mean to awaken to the Christ hidden
in us. The first coming of Christ was to the people at that time to see
him in the flesh, and perhaps the second coming of Christ is to everyone
to see him at any point of time in the spirit, which can be described
as making "the unknown Christ known within yourself by
seeing Him born a second time as the ever-new, ever-increasing joy of
your daily deep meditation." This reminds me of Jesus' words to his
disciples in John 16.
22 And ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.
Yes
the more we behold Christ in us, the more we are being transformed into
the same image as in a mirror from glory to glory in ever increasing
joy, even by the Holy Spirit.
Yes, we have nowhere to go except return to the heart. The only journey is our journey within.
"The only journey is the journey within." ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
“Meditation
increases your vitality and strengthens your intelligence; your beauty
is enhanced; your mental clarity and health improve. You acquire the
patience and fortitude to face any problem in life. So, meditate! Only
through meditation will you find the treasure you are seeking.” — Mata
Amritanandamayi ("Amma")
I agree with the quote on meditation too.
Meditation is indeed beneficial for our mind, intellect and soul as it
stabilises and refreshes us from within. I am learning to live and
breathe mindfully whenever I remember to.
The more we meditate on our true divine identity, the more we are
transformed into the same image from glory to glory, from beauty to
beauty, from one level of brilliance to another level of brilliance. Our
beauty is enhanced, our strength and wisdom is restored, and our youth
is renewed like the eagle's, much like what the quote above says. As we
wait upon the Lord and behold the beauty of our true self, we shall
mount up with wings and soar like eagles, we shall run and not be weary,
we shall walk and not faint, and we shall dance the divine dance to the rhythm of love.
We are not just a face in the crowd. We are favoured children of God. We are a precious blessing wherever we go, bringing refreshing and peace and joy and acceptance.
Jesus is meek and lowly, noble and honourable, gracious and compassionate and full of mercy - and so are we in this world!
Prioritise rest as rest is our greatest responsibility.
Expect the favour of God to work in our life, health, relationships, finances, work today because God treats all of us as Jesus.
Speak blessings because our tongue is like the rudder of the ship, setting the course of our destiny. :)
Keep sowing, keep blessing, and God will bring a harvest in people's lives.
The more we talk about and meditate on the truth of "Christ in us, the hope of glory". the more it becomes a living tangible reality in our lives because what we are conscious of will ultimately manifest. :)
"Rest in the Lord, trust also in Him, and He will make your ways come to pass."
Appreciate what we have because God (our highest self) has blessed us with so much, with the best for us. Thank You, Abba!
When God (our highest self) makes it happen, it's beautiful and effortless. "Commit your ways to Him and He will bring it to pass."
Build our consciousness on Christ by spending time to behold His glory and grace. Children are naturally righteousness-conscious.
God (our highest self) is pleased with us all the time because He sees us in the perfection of His Son (our true identity).
Heaven (our highest consciousness) is where Jesus (our true self) is - His love makes a difference.
Jesus is our perfect representative, and since His thoughts are holiness to the Lord, we are accepted before God (our highest self).
The more we rest, the more we see God's grace in our lives. :)
Jesus is our perfect representative, and we are a reflection of His glory and goodness.
Knowing we are God's beloved gives us dominion in life (over death and condemnation and fear).
God favours us and has crowned and encircled us with glory and honour.
Small acts of kindness are powerful seeds of God's love to help others succeed in life.
"I stand, I stand in awe of You (our highest self). You are marvellous beyond description, too wonderful for words."
God has made us sufficient to be a minister of the new covenant, ministering grace and peace, life and righteousness and no condemnation to people.
Be ourselves, for God has made us unique and complete in Christ.
Jesus (our true identity) is lion and lamb, majesty and meekness, mighty to save yet lowly to serve.
Jesus (our true self) came not to be served but to serve (willingly, out of revelation of kingship and sonship), and give His life as a ransom for many (to redeem ourselves from the illusion of separation and fear).
Jesus is our joy; we don't have to do anything to become joyful.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that
we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that
most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a
child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is
nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel
insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were
born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's
not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light
shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As
we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates
others."
Christianity fosters self-hate in mankind (sometimes tastefully called
"conviction of sin") so that it can offer its own special answer
(salvation) to an entirely artificial problem. The real solution begins
by understanding that there is nothing wrong with you just as you are -
that man is not a "fallen" being.
If you consider yourself a christian, does it strike you as strange if people say christianity is a self-loathing religion? After all, you think christianity is about God loving us unconditionally, even the worst of us. Yet I realise there is something amiss with the presentation of the gospel by mainstream or traditional christianity. The doctrine of "original sin" tends to paint a picture of how sinful and fallen we once were, and a holy and righteous God could not stand being around us for a second more and had to come up with a plan to send His Son to die and cleanse us with His blood to make us acceptable before Him, and even then, those who are seen as "rejecting this good news" will continue to fall out of favour with God and will continue to suffer misery and separation for ages and ages in a place called hell without end after they die. What a miserable existence, is it not?
Another common refrain I have heard in the evangelical christian circles goes something like "We are nothing without Jesus" or "It is all about Jesus, not about me". It is as though to love ourselves the way we are is a terrible sin and can cause us to become proud or puffed up, and so we must see ourselves as originally dirty and condemned, and only Jesus' blood can wash us clean. I also hear believers say things like "All glory to Jesus", as if Jesus is somewhere up there and we are down here, and the only way to defeat pride and demonstrate humility is to try to make ourselves nothing and make Jesus everything.
Why is this important? Well, for a start, it keeps us from actually loving and accepting ourselves the way we are if we think God is constantly trying to change us into something we are not. Secondly, it may cause us to see others as lost and miserable creatures if they do not profess to believe in Jesus. No doubt, some of us may say Jesus saw people as sheep not having a shepherd, but I believe it does not mean that Jesus saw people as being destined to go to a so-called place for hell.
Thirdly, it can create a sense of false humility when people insist on saying that it is all about Jesus and not about them. The question is: How can it be only all about Jesus when He is already one with us? We are inseparable from Jesus, so if Jesus is glorified, so are we glorified together with Him. It is impossible to glorify Jesus without us sharing the same glory that He had, so it might as well be better for us to be truly humble and accept the fact that we are as perfect and complete and righteous and beautiful and powerful as Jesus is.
1 Corinthians 6:17 says "He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him."
"Yes, but that is referring to believers", someone might say. Really? When Jesus died on the cross, who died with Him? When Jesus was raised from the dead, who rose with Him? Only believers? No, every one of us rose together with Him and we are united with Him.
"If we are already righteous, why did Jesus shed His blood then?" Good question. The interesting answer that I have come to learn is that God is not the one who requires the blood sacrifice. The religious sacrificial system is actually a pagan practice, which the Israelites borrowed from the pagan cultures in the old testament times. God does not need to appease His anger because He was not angry with us at all. "What? This is blasphemy! Heresy!" I hear some of you say.
Wait a minute, folks. Why would the Israelites think God was angry with them whenever something bad happened to them? Has it occurred to us that they interpreted events based on their concept of God or Yahweh, thinking that God must be punishing them whenever they were attacked by enemies or harmed by natural disasters like earthquakes? I believe before Jesus came on the scene 2,000 years ago, people back then felt separated from God. It began in the garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and after that, they felt alienated from God. It was interesting to note that God was all the while with humankind, and yet humankind thought their sins had separated them from God.
To cut a long story short, the Jews in the new testament times needed to be saved from sin-consciousness because they had been under the law for so many years (about 430 years). The law of Moses could not save them; it only condemned them. The only way for them to be saved from the religious mindset is to understand that Jesus came to be the perfect offering. Again, it is not to appease God's wrath, but rather to silence the roaring of the lion that accuses them day and night in their own conscience.
"For the worshippers once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins" (Hebrews 10:2)
This blood sacrificial system is never for us today. Why? Because we are never under the law in the first place. We are living in the new covenant of grace already. The law system ended officially in AD70, marked by the destruction of the temple by the Roman army in Jerusalem. So, since we are under not law, and by the law is the knowledge of sin, it means that sin has never been imputed to us.
So let's fast forward to the main question - How are we righteous? Is it by believing in Jesus or is it by Jesus' obedience? Some might say, "well, it is definitely not by our works, because the Jews sought to be righteous by obeying the law to obtain their own righteousness and have not submitted to the righteousness of God, according to Romans 10". I agree we are righteous not by our performance, but it is also not by believing in Jesus either. "What?" I hear you say. Yes, you read it correctly, we are righteous not by believing in Jesus, but by Jesus' obedience.
Romans 5:19 says "For by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man's obedience many will be made righteous".
"Fine" you might say. "That happens when Jesus did the divine exchange at the cross, for God made Jesus who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. That means before Jesus died on the cross, no one was righteous."
Well, not really, because the cross is outside time - Jesus is the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. Therefore, by the time God created humankind, He created us to be righteous and innocent and perfect and complete. We were originally beautiful and good and perfect - that is our true identity, and Jesus came to restore that identity to us. Our part is simply to renew our mind with this wonderful good news.
"And be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness." (Ephesians 4:23-24)
So, the heart of the gospel is that we are created righteous and holy and beautiful, and it is not by our doing but by God's doing. We are crowned with glory and honour. Christ in us is the hope of glory. And Love is who we are because we are made in Love's image.
The gospel of grace and peace proclaims that God has reconciled all things to Himself through Jesus’ finished work at the cross. (Colossians 1:20) Now that we know that all humankind has been reconciled to God, some questions may arise among those who have grown up in traditional or evangelical church teachings, such as:
Does that mean there is no need for faith in Jesus?
Is there still a need to preach the gospel?
What about those who don’t believe the gospel?
What exactly are we saved from?
The post below seeks to address these questions, and more.
—–
According to the gospel, Christ has been made unto us from God wisdom, righteousness, holiness and redemption. By one man’s obedience, all has been made righteous. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law. We all are included in His redemption. We are redeemed from the curse of sickness, lack, identity crisis, low self-esteem, guilt and shame, etc.
I believe salvation is for the soul (mind, will and emotions), so faith in Jesus is necessary. (Hebrews 10:39; James 1:21) When we believe the good news that we are righteous and accepted by God who has never forsaken us from the beginning, we will experience peace for our conscience and healing for our mind and emotions. We begin to live life with hope and expectancy of good things to come, and enjoy the divine dance with our loving God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The kingdom of God is within us, and Christ in us is the hope of glory.
When someone dies without believing in Jesus or having heard about Him, s/he will still be with God, for the spirit returns to Him who gave it (Ecclesiastes 12:7). S/he will not be in a place called “hell” (which is implied as eternal separation from God or eternal damnation or everlasting punishment or torture). Hell or gehenna as mentioned in the gospel accounts refer to the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in AD70 (which was described in the book of Revelations concerning the end of the old covenant age and the establishment of the new covenant world “new heavens and new earth”). Hades is simply grave or a place of the unseen (or ignorance of God’s love and of our true identity, which shall not prevail against the church).
When we proclaim this gospel of grace and peace, we are reminding others of their true identity. They will be awakened to who they really are, and start reigning in life through Jesus Christ. “Much more those who receive abundance of grace and gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One Jesus Christ (not one day after they die)“. (Romans 5:17; words in parentheses are mine) Praise the Lord for the good news. That’s why we continue to preach or proclaim the gospel so that more and more people will know the unconditional love and amazing grace of God, and become established in their true identity, and start to reign in life!
Steve McVey said, “the efficacy of the cross is done, whether we believe it or not. But by rejecting it, our experience will not be what our acceptance would facilitate. It’s the same ‘River of Fire’ (Dan 7:10) – God’s Love – that flows from the throne down upon all of us. To those who believe, it will be the joy of heaven.” I agree that those who believe the good news, it will be the joy of heaven.
As for those who don’t believe the gospel, I believe that it doesn't mean they will end up in a place called "hell" after they die. It simply means that they will not get to enjoy the benefits of salvation that believers enjoy while they are alive, which includes peace for the conscience, divine healing, freedom from guilt and condemnation, etc.
In the beginning, Adam and Eve became afraid of God after they disobeyed Him in the garden of Eden, but it wasn’t God’s love that caused them to distance themselves from Him because He draws people to Himself with lovingkindness. Rather, it’s the fallen human mindset that blinds people to see the reality of God’s love, and hence Jesus has come to show us how good and loving God really is. This good news of knowing how much God loves us will help to build our consciousness of God as our loving Father. In fact, our God is a triune God – the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is in constant fellowship with us because He is a relational being, not a legalistic judge or book-keeper.
In conclusion, salvation is for the here and now, not one day in the future. “Behold, now is the accepted time (of favour); behold, now is the day of salvation.” (2 Corinthians 6:2) Jesus came to save us from the Adamic curse of living a performance-based life marked by stress, guilt and condemnation, that we might live the abundant life freely and lightly, flowing with the unforced rhythm of grace (unmerited favour), where He works miracles among us by the hearing of faith (about our right standing with God).
The Meaning of "Salvation" Depends on Context in which It Appears in the Bible
Someone has asked a question which I’ve also been thinking about lately: “Other than being saved from the destruction of Jerusalem, is there anything that the 1st century believers were saved from?”
Since salvation (‘soteria’ in Greek) means wholeness, health, deliverance, preservation and prosperity (in spirit, soul and body), I think salvation includes healing, provisions, etc.
For example, after Peter healed the lame man in the name of Jesus, he went on to say that there is no other name except Jesus by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12), the context was healing.
Another example: When the woman with the issue of blood for 12 years was healed after touching the hem of Jesus’ garment, Jesus told her “Daughter, be of good comfort, Your faith has saved you.” The Greek word ‘sozo’ (saves) means healing in that context. So yea, salvation includes healing.
