Full Transcript:
The concept of God as a Father did not originate with Jesus, Even so, any effort to study his life and teachings will reveal that he exalted and elevated the idea while advancing a more meaningful revelation of God and by proclaiming that every one of us is a child of this Father of love, truly a son of God.
While Jesus experienced all the natural difficulties and contradictions of human existence, he also enjoyed the peace that accompany’s unquestioned trust in God. He knew the thrill of living, by faith, in the presence of our heavenly Father. And this triumphant faith was a living experience of actual spirit attainment. The great contribution Jesus made was that he demonstrated a new and higher type of living faith in God.
His was not a struggling soul at war with the universe and at death grips with a hostile and sinful world. To him faith was not merely a consolation prize for human sorrows. The religion of Jesus was also not a mystic meditation. It was not merely an intellectual reflection. It was, rather, based on a personal spiritual relationship with our Father. It was validated by genuine personal experience.
The faith of Jesus was living, original, spontaneous, and purely spiritual. This faith was not reverence for a sacred creed, but it was firmly rooted in a profound conviction. It was so real that any spiritual doubts and conflicting desires vanished. He was undaunted, steadfast, and completely free from fear. His consciousness of spiritual invincibility was evidenced by unflinching faith and unquestioning loyalty to the Father and his will.
Jesus highlighted the loyalty aspects of faith that wholly dominated his thoughts, his feelings, his beliefs, his prayers, his teaching, and his preaching. The life and teachings of Jesus are of greatest value to those who are sincere in their quest for truth. To find out what Jesus believed, to discover his ideals, and to strive for the achievement of his exalted life purpose, is to “follow Jesus.” To personally share his religious faith and to enter into the spirit of unselfish service for a great humanity is “to love one another” just as he commanded us to do.
The facts, ideas, and relationships that are the essential elements of universal reality are the corollaries of science, philosophy, and truth. Our progressive comprehension of reality greatly facilitates the approach to God. It is, after all, his creation we are seeking to comprehend. Appreciating the creation is a necessary part of appreciating Our Creator. Experiencing self-completion, self-entirety, and self-totality is understood as the consciousness of identity with reality. The full realization of God, the God-knowing experience, is dependent on some appreciation for total reality. It is, in essence as well as substance, the finding of God.
Our most effective witness is, for the most part, a wholly unconscious and spontaneous expression of the soul. Our personal experience with God is best revealed through the consecration and dedication, of our own wills, through the service of doing the divine will. This spiritual attitude, this personal faith, is the greatest of all offerings. Jesus consistently interpreted religion in the context of the Father’s will.
Of all the knowledge we may acquire, to know the religious life of Jesus will be of the greatest value in this short lifetime and throughout eternity. To Jesus, prayer was always intended as a truly spiritual expression of loyalty, sincerity, thanksgiving, and personal devotion. It was also, at times, a technique for the adjustment of difficulties and the mobilization of soul powers to withstand all human tendencies toward selfishness, evil, and sin.
Jesus was consistently motivated by such living faith. His was a sublime religious experience. The secret of his unparalleled religious life was his consciousness of the abiding presence of God. He attained and maintained it by unbroken communion through intelligent prayer and sincere worship.
If the living religion of Jesus should suddenly supplant the theologic religion about Jesus, all of humanity would soon realize he truly belongs to us and we to him. Jesus brought to God, as a man of the realm, evidence of humanity’s value to an entire universe. The Master ascended on high as a man, as well as God. He led a life of prayerful consecration to the doing of our Father’s will and ended his mortal life triumphantly.
In light of his origins, and his desire to be close to us as a part of his creation, discussions concerning the humanity or the divinity of the Christ have long obscured the saving truth that Jesus of Nazareth lived a full mortal life as a religious man who, by faith, achieved the knowing and the doing of the will of God. He led by example and taught us that the full summation of human life is revealed as we are educated by fact, ennobled by wisdom, and saved — justified — by faith.