God & Jesus ~ Who’s Who?
Thu, Dec 10, 2009
When we read the Bible it can be confusing, especially in the New Testament when often Jesus refers to God as His Father and in many other places states that ‘He and the Father are One.’ So, who is this Father who sends His only Son to earth to do the dirty work? Would a real God really do that? For those of us who read the works of Emanuel Swedenborg, we can say an emphatic: “No Way!”
To truly understand who God is, we need to go beyond the literal meaning of the Bible and that’s why the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) were provided for humankind to unfold these mysteries of faith. Here’s some basic truths that Swedenborg teaches us about God and Jesus:
• God and Jesus are the same Person (including the Holy Spirit makes a Trinity within)
• Jesus is God in the flesh. The Holy Spirit is His Divine actions
• He was not a sacrifice for our sins; He came down to walk His talk
• He came to put the hells back into their place – they were out of control
• He came down to save our freedom of choice, not to give us a get-out-of-jail-free card
• He came down to set an example that we can follow in our own lives
• God as Jesus lived by the same rules that He expects us to live by
• God is pure Love and is not capable of ill will, he only allows bad things in order to preserve our individual freedom
• The Bible is the Word of God and contains deeper spiritual truths within its literal stories
To explain further, if we look at ourselves as an image of God, we are made up of a soul (Father/God), a body (Jesus), and we perform uses (Holy Spirit). When we view God as three separate entities, especially one as an angry, unforgiving Father and then the compassionate, gentle Son, we naturally will play favourites and tend to pit one against the other. Who would you love more? That leaves us to fit the ethereal, elusive Holy Spirit into some unknown category. According to Swedenborg, this is not how God wants us to know Him. God’s first commandment: Do not worship other gods. No exceptions. We learn from Swedenborg that the entire Bible has an inner or deeper meaning, giving us a deeper understanding of how the commandments can be applied to our life on different levels, but never that there are exceptions. God is Jesus. One God.
He came down to earth in a human body with all of the human tendencies we are born into, that He received from His mother’s side. His soul was Divine. When He died, His Body became Divine as well, unlike us, our bodies remain on earth to decay and only our spirit lives on. While The Lord was on earth He lived through and had to overcome all of the evil influences that we deal with everyday, like our egos, self-centeredness, physical needs, frustration, anger, sadness, and constant temptation, only He endured unseen attacks on His integrity that you and I could never even imagine let alone endure. Even in His times of weakness as we can read about in the Easter story, He overcame them all! He set an example just as a good parent would. Everybody knows that the best way to teach children is by example not by words alone. That’s exactly what God did! And that makes rational sense. It wouldn’t be fair that He made all these commandments and golden rules for us to follow, but never showed us how by example.
Jesus wasn’t a sacrifice for an unforgiving God. God came down to walk His talk. By overcoming temptations on earth He continued His regeneration process represented by the story of creation and explained in it’s deeper and applicable meaning in Swedenborg’s works Secrets of Heaven.
If God had not done this, the whole human race would have perished in hell. We would have lost our freedom to choose between good or evil and heaven or hell. The world was in spiritual crisis. Jesus saved us from our sins that got us into that situation. This decline of the state of spirit started at the time represented by the story of the Garden of Eden. Our Father came down Himself to bail us out and clean up the self destructive mess. Rest assured, God in Spirit, Body, and Action was here on earth demonstrating His unconditional love for His children in crisis. He’s not angry or vengeful; He only wants us to love Him back. He loves us so much He was willing to go through anything to save our freedom, because ALL love comes from freedom. Sound like a teenager story? Well, it is. Swedenborg talks extensively about that state in us in his books.
The Lord God Jesus Christ saved us from our sins and the damage they had caused to our spiritual freedom NOT from our future sins, that’s up to us. His time on the cross was not a get out of jail free card. Why? Because it doesn’t make sense and God doesn’t do anything that doesn’t make rational sense. He came to restore our Free will, not enable our bad habits. Would you as a parent step in and do jail time for one of your children who has committed a crime, so they can keep on stealing, raping, killing? And those parents who do enable and bail out their out of control kids, do they get anywhere by doing that? How about using anger, threats and force on a headstrong teen, that just pushes them further away doesn’t it? All you can do is make your set of rules clear fair and simple and stick by them and then leave them in their freedom to live by them or move out. Do you ever stop loving them?
Lets’ keep in mind as we wrestle through life’s hardships, which only exist because others are choosing freely to do bad things, that God has also ‘been there done that’ and is always at our doorstep waiting for us to let Him in.
No comments:
Post a Comment