Episode:Jesus Culminates His Ministry—Final Preaching and Teaching (Part 1)
Jesus taught, saying: “Your inability or unwillingness to forgive your fellows is the measure of your immaturity, your failure to attain adult sympathy, understanding, and love. You hold grudges and nurse vengefulness in direct proportion to your ignorance of the inner nature and true longings of your children and your fellow beings. Love is the outworking of the divine and inner urge of life.”
Keywords: Urantia, Jesus, Divine Forgiveness, God and Taxes, Resurrection of the Righteous
Opening thought: The Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness; according to the cleanness of my hands he has recompensed me. For I have kept the ways of the Lord; and have not wickedly departed from my God. All his laws are before me; I have not turned away from his decrees. Psalms 18
Summary by Kermit
Commentary after Review
We pursued further the importance of appreciating Jesus’ mission as spiritual uplifter and NOT a social, economic, or political reformer. The eternal life Jesus offers us requires a spiritual birth transcendent of material, temporal considerations. Religious transformation involves the reciprocation of attractions, purposes and goals from material to spiritual, from human to divine, and from things temporal to life eternal.
Also, revisiting the parable of the wedding feast, we regularly warn of the danger in a believer’s overemphasis on the entrance requirement for the kingdom of heaven of childlike faith to the exclusion of the requirement for progressing therein: the righteous bearing of the fruits of the spirit. It is a question of cosmic physics. The love of God and the law of God are not antipodal attitudes of our Creator. Divine law is the fact of God not the rules of conduct. Jesus speaks of a severe test in entering the kingdom of heaven: faith gets you in the door but fruits of the Father’s spirit must follow in order to continue to ascend in the progressive life of the divine fellowship. It is through the mindal gateway to the spiritual nature (inner life) which secures eternity and not the discipline or subjugation of the appetites of the body. Ask yourself, are your desires for survival or are they of survival value?
Jesus adds a seemingly mysterious element to the story of the cornerstone which is found in Psalms 118:22 which did not find mention in Matthew, Mark or Luke. The rejected stone becomes the cornerstone, but Jesus adds, if you fall upon it and are broken you shall be saved, whereas if it falls upon you, you are destroyed That is, Jesus being the stone if identified therewith though you may be put to death, you are saved. Whereas, when the weight of truth falls upon you, only destruction ensues.
Paper 174 Tuesday Morning in the Temple
Again we find the midwayer narrative utilizes the gospel accounts of these events, synthesizing, clarifying, and supplementing the gospel narrative to present the correct factual “who, what, when, where, and why” details through which the truths of the revelation can flow with less distortion of meaning. We should not fault the gospel writers for their spare and vague descriptions of the Master’s outer life inasmuch as he came to reveal the Father who has no outer life. The 5th ER goes well beyond the inner life initiation step of accepting the gifts of sonship with God. This necessitates a careful ordering and narration of the factual disclosures of Jesus’ life. With this factual foundation of the Master’s outer life, we can the better appreciate the precision and complexity of the fruits of his outer life as the manifestation of his inner faith nucleus.
As the company prepared to enter Jerusalem this Tuesday Jesus had delivered final comments, advice, instructions, and farewells to Lazarus, the aged Simon, and the women’s corps. He then proceeded to greet each of the twelve with a personal salutation. This was Jesus’ attempt to secure their inner faith nucleus and help them focus on their eternal and spiritual moorings in the face of the cataclysmic events immediately to come. The common theme of his remarks were, “remain firm in faith, put your trust in eternal sureties and maintain your loyalties to your oaths of consecration”. In his personal remarks to each of the twelve Jesus demonstrates his foresight, human and divine, of the apostles earthly as well as heavenly futures. See James and Simon Zelotes in particular.
173:1 Divine Forgiveness
Jesus spent more than an hour with his inner circle on Mount Olivet before proceeding to Jerusalem while the others went to establish the Gethsemane camp, their headquarters for the remainder of the Master’s life in the flesh. During this time Peter and James sought resolution to their differing opinions concerning the forgiveness of sin. James held that the Father forgives even before he is asked. Peter asserted that repentance and confession must precede the forgiveness.
From the viewpoint of the Father who is existential and does not engage his children in time or space, his forgiveness (patient love) is likewise existential. Yet, in time and space Michael of Nebadon is on record offering forgiveness to those Luciferian rebels who show proof of sincere repentance. Both of the apostles are supported in a sense. Couching the discussion in familiar terms Jesus likens the Father to intelligent earthly parents whose wise understanding sympathy is able to recognize the immaturity of the child and avoid taking offense. And so with the heavenly Father: he is never offended by virtue of his infinite understanding and perfect knowledge of all circumstances impinging on the creature. So it is with the maturing kingdom believer who in quest of God-likeness is called upon to exercise forgiveness in measure with adult sympathy, understanding, and love. And still, love and mercy are helpless to mitigate sin in the face of the creature’s willful refusal to repent.
174:2 Questions by the Jewish Leaders
In a show of solidarity all of the major religio-political factions of the Jews decided on a plan to discredit the Master before the people. Groups of learned men and students from the religious academies came with prepared questions designed to entrap and embarrass Jesus. These scenes are portrayed in the gospel records, Matthew 22, Mark 12, and Luke 20. This particular scene concerns the question regarding the payment of taxes to which the Master makes his famous and sagacious reply: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and render to God the things that are God’s.” As we read, the Master was never evasive, but always wise in his dealings with those who sought to destroy him.
173:3 The Sadducees and the Resurrection
Note the irony in the scene with the crafty Sadducees who present a preposterous scenario concerning the Mosaic teaching concerning brothers marrying their brothers’ widow, and querying Jesus as to whose wife she would be in heaven, inasmuch as the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection! Jesus delivered another poke to the hypocritical Sadducees in his response likening the heavenly resurrected to angels, when the Sadducees did not believe in angels either. To this response by Jesus, the Pharisees, who do believe in both angels and the resurrection were momentarily exultant to see their customary rival Sadducees themselves discredited before the people.
