Chapter 9

Sons of Men Living as Sons of God

It was the element of human service that fired the life of the Way-shower, and that continually led him on. He felt his leadership, his mastery, undoubtedly, and perhaps his greatness, but it was always subservient to his own dictum: He that is greatest among you shall be he who serves. Hence there was ever that splendid humility which is always found with real power and real greatness.

He made it plain that he had something that they did not possess, but that he was the same as they were. And when he said, ‘I and my Father are one, again he said, ‘as I am you shall be.’

Through a rare understanding, through an illumined and exalted vision of life, he took his real pedigree from God, but he always remembered he was a man. This is a vital part of both his message and his value, to us men of earth. This, when we understand him and his purpose aright, is what makes him no enigma. This is what makes him the Great Teacher, the Master, the revealer of the truth that the Divine life of God is the life that is man.

Every man is a potential son of God: to realise this, to be born from above, is the saving grace that changes the potentiality into the reality. Man is saved thereby from his lower conceptions and wanderings and blunders, and this Divine realisation makes him heir to the guidance, the help, the power, the supply, that pertains to the universal Source. Hence: seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, the Kingdom of God within, and all other things shall. be added unto you.

This truth that I bring you, he said in effect, that the Kingdom of God is within you, makes clear, alive, and potent the truth that man is created in the image and likeness of God. But God is Spirit, as I have said, and spirit is life — the Universal Spirit and power of life that manifests itself, as individual spirit, in man. He taught what he had uniquely and so abundantly found: the conscious union with the Father’s life as the one and all-inclusive thing.

The Kingdom of God and His righteousness, the Kingdom within, is not only what he came to teach, but what he clearly and unmistakably and in many varied forms did teach. ‘He went about through cities and villages, preaching and bringing the good tidings of the Kingdom of God.’ He had a great vision and faith in its value and power — ‘And this gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in the whole world, for a testimony unto all nations.’

It is on account of man’s not knowing this inner fountain of life, this light of the Spirit, or on account of his departing from it, that sin and error and the sense of sin, that disease and fears and forebodings, that heart-pain and hunger creep in and assume the mastery. Things become hidden, uncertainties abound, perplexities prevail, because the mind and the spirit are not awake to the light that lighteth every man who cometh into the world, available for every man who desires, seeks, and follows the light.

‘I am that light,’ he said, ‘through the knowledge of this gospel of the Kingdom that I bear witness to.’ This he said of himself, as the giver of the light-bearing truth which he so clearly taught. The light that will radiate from this inner Centre will make you always sure of your way.

‘I am the light of the world; he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.’ (John viii. 12.) He longs for men to get his central truth, and he tries so hard to make it plain, and what it will do for them.

It was an earlier prophet who said: ‘The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord.’ The son of man through the light that had been given to him, and that made him uniquely the son of God, would light this candIe in all other men, so that they too might become sons of God, born from above, becoming in turn a light for other men.

This he expected of those who would be his real followers, for he said: ‘Let your light so shine before men, that they seeing your good work may glorify your Father in heaven.’ It was a great truth, redemptive, building, saving, and he would give his life if need be to establish it in men’s minds. No man perhaps has ever had a greater sense of human service.

No man perhaps has been so supremely an exemplar for other men. From first to last, from early to late — ‘Know you not that I must be about my Father’s business?’ It is wonderful — my Father and your Father. Call no man your father upon the earth, for one is your Father, even God. It is wonderful. You are heir of the Eternal. Your Kingdom awaits you. You are a creature of sin and a worm of the dust only if you think you are. I bring you knowledge of your Divine sonship.

The time was ripe in the evolution of the race for another step up to be made, the step in consciousness from the natural man to the spiritual man. In the Christ Jesus was that peculiar combination through which this could be effected. His unusual intuitive perception united to a clear-seeing mind — this combined with an humbleness of spirit and a deep sense of comradeship resulted in making him an evangel, a teacher, so great that he becomes the Way-shower and, in truth, the saviour of all to whose minds and hearts his revelation makes an appeal.

This new and larger perception of life so filled and so thrilled him that with a mighty urge it pushed him out into the highways and byways of his native Galilee, and to Judsea to the south where the Temple of his people was, proclaiming as he went, ‘I am come that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly.’

This he did with an earnestness, a persuasiveness that thrilled men’s souls for wellnigh three years. And the common people heard him gladly — sometimes too gladly, or so it would seem — and in such numbers that he inevitably ran up against the entrenched ecclesiastical system of the priests of the temple. They, realising that it meant interference with their authority and their living, killed him. He cared more for the truth and its saving value to his people, and eventually through them to the world, than he did for his own life.

‘I must be about my Father’s business,’ My Father’s business is to make Him known to you, my brothers — my Father and your Father. You are ignorant of who and what you are. The Infinite spirit of life, the life of God the Father, is the life that is in you. That is my realisation; this is my revelation to you.

If you will believe my word, if you will receive this my truth, if you will live in this realisation, you will not only receive me and be my disciples, but you will be born anew, born from above, and you will enter into the power and the glory of the Kingdom of God and His righteousness — and righteousness means right living. And then, as I have said, all other things, good things, needed things, true things, shall be added unto you.

It is the Kingdom of Heaven — and heaven means harmony. You are living in harmony with the Father’s life — son of man living, joyously living, as son of God. It is simple. There is nothing complex. Believe me. My tcaching is not mine, but His that sent me. I am come in my Father’s name.

‘Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life.’

A wonderful statement, a wonderful promise; but it is given by one who drank deep at the Source, and it is given with splendid assurance.

Every man must stand in some relation to his Maker. We men and women of today should, almost beyond calculation, be grateful that we have one of the character and the stature of Jesus of Galilee as our helper and guide. A life beyond reproach, un-self-centred, uniquely equipped for finding and knowing God in his own life, so filled with love for his fellow men, that the great purpose and passion of his life became to make known to others this greatest and most valuable thing that can be known.

The certainty of this knowledge and its tremendous help in his own life should make his words come with such convincing authority as to lift a great burden of uncertainty and responsibility from our own minds and lives. And the beauty of it is that each of us, if we be genuinely interested and in earnest, may quickly test the truth and the value — the concrete, everyday-life value — of his revelation.

Moreover, we may rest assured that one of his splendid mind and insight and spirit would not — and entirely of his own accord — spend his life in imparting this to others, if he did not thoroughly realise and understand its value — not only its truth, but its value.

Yes, we may rest in the assurance that the Master knew whereof he spoke, and that his promises are true. He realised and he knew the life of God first-hand. With him there was never any harking back to someone else, to some past age of formulation; never even ‘The prophets have said.’

It was his experience of God first-hand that makes him speak with authority, the authority that grips our interest, our confidence, and our faith in him, and our allegiance to his great human-divine message.

It is no small privilege for uncertain, confused, and mystified men to be enabled to know God, and the life and the power and the joy of His Kingdom, from such a source — the supreme Way-shower for all who would know ‘The Way.’