Baptism and the Forty Days

136:6.1Hav­ing set­tled his pol­icy con­cern­ing all per­son­al­i­ties of all classes of his cre­ated in­tel­li­gences, so far as this could be de­ter­mined in view of the in­her­ent po­ten­tial of his new sta­tus of di­vin­ity, Je­sus now turned his thoughts to­ward him­self. What would he, now the fully self-con­scious cre­ator of all things and be­ings ex­is­tent in this uni­verse, do with these cre­ator pre­rog­a­tives in the re­cur­ring life sit­u­a­tions which would im­me­di­ately con­front him when he re­turned to Gal­i­lee to re­sume his work among men? In fact, al­ready, and right where he was in these lonely hills, had this prob­lem forcibly pre­sented it­self in the mat­ter of ob­tain­ing food. By the third day of his soli­tary med­i­ta­tions the hu­man body grew hun­gry. Should he go in quest of food as any or­di­nary man would, or should he merely ex­er­cise his nor­mal cre­ative pow­ers and pro­duce suit­able bod­ily nour­ish­ment ready at hand? And this great de­ci­sion of the Mas­ter has been por­trayed to you as a temp­ta­tion—as a chal­lenge by sup­posed en­e­mies that he “com­mand that these stones be­come loaves of bread.”

136:6.2Je­sus thus set­tled upon an­other and con­sis­tent pol­icy for the re­main­der of his earth labors. As far as his per­sonal ne­ces­si­ties were con­cerned, and in gen­eral even in his re­la­tions with other per­son­al­i­ties, he now de­lib­er­ately chose to pur­sue the path of nor­mal earthly ex­is­tence; he def­i­nitely de­cided against a pol­icy which would tran­scend, vi­o­late, or out­rage his own es­tab­lished nat­u­ral laws. But he could not prom­ise him­self, as he had al­ready been warned by his Per­son­al­ized Ad­juster, that these nat­u­ral laws might not, in cer­tain con­ceiv­able cir­cum­stances, be greatly ac­cel­er­ated. In prin­ci­ple, Je­sus de­cided that his life­work should be or­ga­nized and pros­e­cuted in ac­cor­dance with nat­u­ral law and in har­mony with the ex­ist­ing so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion. The Mas­ter thereby chose a pro­gram of liv­ing which was the equiv­a­lent of de­cid­ing against mir­a­cles and won­ders. Again he de­cided in fa­vor of “the Fa­ther’s will”; again he sur­ren­dered ev­ery­thing into the hands of his Par­a­dise Fa­ther.

136:6.3Je­sus’ hu­man na­ture dic­tated that the first duty was self-preser­va­tion; that is the nor­mal at­ti­tude of the nat­u­ral man on the worlds of time and space, and it is, there­fore, a le­git­i­mate re­ac­tion of a Uran­tia mor­tal. But Je­sus was not con­cerned merely with this world and its crea­tures; he was liv­ing a life de­signed to in­struct and in­spire the man­i­fold crea­tures of a far-flung uni­verse.

136:6.4Be­fore his bap­tismal il­lu­mi­na­tion he had lived in per­fect sub­mis­sion to the will and guid­ance of his heav­enly Fa­ther. He em­phat­i­cally de­cided to con­tinue on in just such im­plicit mor­tal de­pen­dence on the Fa­ther’s will. He pur­posed to fol­low the un­nat­u­ral course—he de­cided not to seek self-preser­va­tion. He chose to go on pur­su­ing the pol­icy of re­fus­ing to de­fend him­self. He for­mu­lated his con­clu­sions in the words of Scrip­ture fa­mil­iar to his hu­man mind: “Man shall not live by bread alone but by ev­ery word that pro­ceeds from the mouth of God.” In reach­ing this con­clu­sion in re­gard to the ap­petite of the phys­i­cal na­ture as ex­pressed in hunger for food, the Son of Man made his fi­nal dec­la­ra­tion con­cern­ing all other urges of the flesh and the nat­u­ral im­pulses of hu­man na­ture.

136:6.5His super­hu­man power he might pos­si­bly use for oth­ers, but for him­self, never. And he pur­sued this pol­icy con­sis­tently to the very end, when it was jeer­ingly said of him: “He saved oth­ers; him­self he can­not save”—be­cause he would not.

136:6.6The Jews were ex­pect­ing a Mes­siah who would do even greater won­ders than Moses, who was re­puted to have brought forth wa­ter from the rock in a desert place and to have fed their fore­fa­thers with manna in the wilder­ness. Je­sus knew the sort of Mes­siah his com­pa­tri­ots ex­pected, and he had all the pow­ers and pre­rog­a­tives to mea­sure up to their most san­guine ex­pec­ta­tions, but he de­cided against such a mag­nif­i­cent pro­gram of power and glory. Je­sus looked upon such a course of ex­pected mir­a­cle work­ing as a hark­ing back to the olden days of ig­no­rant magic and the de­graded prac­tices of the sav­age med­i­cine men. Pos­si­bly, for the sal­va­tion of his crea­tures, he might ac­cel­er­ate nat­u­ral law, but to tran­scend his own laws, ei­ther for the ben­e­fit of him­self or the over­aw­ing of his fel­low men, that he would not do. And the Mas­ter’s de­ci­sion was fi­nal.

136:6.7Je­sus sor­rowed for his peo­ple; he fully un­der­stood how they had been led up to the ex­pec­ta­tion of the com­ing Mes­siah, the time when “the earth will yield its fruits ten thou­sand­fold, and on one vine there will be a thou­sand branches, and each branch will pro­duce a thou­sand clus­ters, and each clus­ter will pro­duce a thou­sand grapes, and each grape will pro­duce a gal­lon of wine.” The Jews be­lieved the Mes­siah would usher in an era of mirac­u­lous plenty. The He­brews had long been nur­tured on tra­di­tions of mir­a­cles and leg­ends of won­ders.

136:6.8He was not a Mes­siah com­ing to mul­ti­ply bread and wine. He came not to min­is­ter to tem­po­ral needs only; he came to re­veal his Fa­ther in heaven to his chil­dren on earth, while he sought to lead his earth chil­dren to join him in a sin­cere ef­fort so to live as to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

136:6.9In this de­ci­sion Je­sus of Naz­a­reth por­trayed to an on­look­ing uni­verse the folly and sin of pros­ti­tut­ing di­vine tal­ents and God-given abil­i­ties for per­sonal ag­gran­dize­ment or for purely self­ish gain and glo­ri­fi­ca­tion. That was the sin of Lu­cifer and Cali­gas­tia.

136:6.10This great de­ci­sion of Je­sus por­trays dra­mat­i­cally the truth that self­ish sat­is­fac­tion and sen­su­ous grat­i­fi­ca­tion, alone and of them­selves, are not able to con­fer hap­pi­ness upon evolv­ing hu­man be­ings. There are higher val­ues in mor­tal ex­is­tence—in­tel­lec­tual mas­tery and spir­i­tual achieve­ment—which far tran­scend the nec­es­sary grat­i­fi­ca­tion of man’s purely phys­i­cal ap­petites and urges. Man’s nat­u­ral en­dow­ment of tal­ent and abil­ity should be chiefly de­voted to the de­vel­op­ment and en­no­ble­ment of his higher pow­ers of mind and spirit.

136:6.11Je­sus thus re­vealed to the crea­tures of his uni­verse the tech­nique of the new and bet­ter way, the higher moral val­ues of liv­ing and the deeper spir­i­tual sat­is­fac­tions of evo­lu­tion­ary hu­man ex­is­tence on the worlds of space.