Episode:Jesus—His Living Faith (Part 1)
In the earthly life of Jesus, religion was a living experience, a direct and personal movement from spiritual reverence to practical righteousness. The faith of Jesus bore the transcendent fruits of the divine spirit.
Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, Faith, Prayer, Heavenly Father
Summary by Kermit
Paper 196. The Faith of Jesus
Discussion concerning the literary grandeur of this paper and the precision of construction employed by the authors. We are told Jesus never RELIGIOUSLY doubted the certainty of God’s watchcare and guidance. And he joined this certitude of the divine with the complicated and unfortunate facts of material existence in his loving and merciful bestowal. His was not an optimism blind to material facts, but a full recognition, realization, and appreciation for the threefold functional reality of matter, mind, and spirit in revealing the Father to mankind.
We examined the words, holy, just, and great, and true, beautiful, and good, and how this represents the reality response recognition, whereby personality is functioning in the spiritual domain above mere mindal self. Mindal self recognizes holy, just, and great, while spiritual consciousness recognizes true, beautiful, and good. Thus we see Jesus as a fully integrated and unified spiritually purposed and mindal self.
The authors are here emphasizing the importance of connecting the heights of spiritual (unity) consciousness down into daily life (individuality), as opposed to seeking spiritual heights disconnected from material considerations.
Jesus’ sublime faith, characterized by tranquillity, and the thrill of living, is contrasted with faith as; consolation in difficulties, comfort in despair, or compensation for the sorrows of living. Jesus’ great contribution to the values of human experience was his demonstration of a new and higher type of living faith in God.
In our discussion of the word “living”, we note that it is used and italicized twice in this paragraph. “Living” takes place in the relationship between the material consciousness and the spiritual consciousness. Living faith comes from the maturing of faith in the personal recognition of the Father and trust in the grounding influence of the experience of steps taken on your personal path. Here we see both the Father’s will (faith) and the Father’s way (trust) in play. The initial spiritual relationship to the Father is thus woven into cosmic substance (soul) and you stand on it.
The Master’s life reveals a new and higher type of religion—personal spiritual relations with the Father and validated by the authority of GENUINE personal experience, as herein, contrasted with intellectual reflection or mystic meditation.
We discussed the importance of the PERSONAL spiritual experience, as opposed to just a spiritual experience, experience with spirit energy without the focalizing, harmonizing influence of personality.
We enjoyed further dialogue concerning the oft encountered expression,1 I’m spiritual, but not religious.
A reference from Paper 169:4, p. 1856 “You learn about God from Jesus by observing the divinity of his life, not by depending on his teachings.”
Jesus’ faith was personal, living, original, spontaneous, and purely spiritual. It was not reverence for tradition, or intellectual belief, but a sublime experience and profound conviction which securely held him. This real and all-encompassing faith was a spiritual anchorage, a fearless consciousness of spiritual invincibility, undimmed even in the face of his death.
Discussion: Here the origin of the word religion (bound back to God) and the thinking man’s fear of being HELD by a religion was explored. Also, note the term used is spiritual invincibility, not mindal invincibility. His faith being purely spiritual forever contrasts such faith with mere exalted belief (mindal).
Jesus’ faith was further contrasted with the sometimes disastrous fanatacism of the religious genius with a strong spiritual faith.
Jesus’ splendidly unified human personality always coordinated his soul-faith with his experiential wisdom.
In studying the Master’s life we are admonished to look for what he did, not so much as what he taught. Here we find the beautiful recitation of the many dimensions of the prayer life of Jesus.
Discussion: Here the top down character of Jesus’ prayer life was examined. The ascent of prayer from thanksgiving, to true worship is taken even further up until you find TRUE prayer, coming down. Instead of you looking up and asking for stuff, it’s a down-welling phenomenon of the personalized self that has experienced true worship and now has great things to hand down to that self which is climbing up.
In Jesus’ earthly life, religion was a direct and personal movement from spiritual reverence to practical righteousness. His faith attained the sincere and trusting optimism of a believing child combined with the stalwart and intelligent courage of a full-grown man, all the while avoiding any trace of presumption or childishness.
The Master desires that all his followers should fully share his transcendent faith. He requires that we believe with him as opposed believe in him.
