The Ordination of the Twelve

140:10.1That evening while teach­ing in the house, for it had be­gun to rain, Je­sus talked at great length, try­ing to show the twelve what they must be, not what they must do. They knew only a re­li­gion that im­posed the do­ing of cer­tain things as the means of at­tain­ing righ­teous­ness—sal­va­tion. But Je­sus would re­it­er­ate, “In the king­dom you must be righ­teous in or­der to do the work.” Many times did he re­peat, “Be you there­fore per­fect, even as your Fa­ther in heaven is per­fect.” All the while was the Mas­ter ex­plain­ing to his be­wil­dered apos­tles that the sal­va­tion which he had come to bring to the world was to be had only by be­liev­ing, by sim­ple and sin­cere faith. Said Je­sus: “John preached a bap­tism of re­pen­tance, sor­row for the old way of liv­ing. You are to pro­claim the bap­tism of fel­low­ship with God. Preach re­pen­tance to those who stand in need of such teach­ing, but to those al­ready seek­ing sin­cere en­trance to the king­dom, open the doors wide and bid them en­ter into the joy­ous fel­low­ship of the sons of God.” But it was a dif­fi­cult task to per­suade these Galilean fish­er­men that, in the king­dom, be­ing righ­teous, by faith, must pre­cede do­ing righ­teous­ness in the daily life of the mor­tals of earth.

140:10.2An­other great hand­i­cap in this work of teach­ing the twelve was their ten­dency to take highly ide­al­is­tic and spir­i­tual prin­ci­ples of re­li­gious truth and re­make them into con­crete rules of per­sonal con­duct. Je­sus would pre­sent to them the beau­ti­ful spirit of the soul’s at­ti­tude, but they in­sisted on trans­lat­ing such teach­ings into rules of per­sonal be­hav­ior. Many times, when they did make sure to re­mem­ber what the Mas­ter said, they were al­most cer­tain to for­get what he did not say. But they slowly as­sim­i­lated his teach­ing be­cause Je­sus was all that he taught. What they could not gain from his ver­bal in­struc­tion, they grad­u­ally ac­quired by liv­ing with him.

140:10.3It was not ap­par­ent to the apos­tles that their Mas­ter was en­gaged in liv­ing a life of spir­i­tual in­spi­ra­tion for ev­ery per­son of ev­ery age on ev­ery world of a far-flung uni­verse. Not­with­stand­ing what Je­sus told them from time to time, the apos­tles did not grasp the idea that he was do­ing a work on this world but for all other worlds in his vast cre­ation. Je­sus lived his earth life on Uran­tia, not to set a per­sonal ex­am­ple of mor­tal liv­ing for the men and women of this world, but rather to cre­ate a high spir­i­tual and in­spi­ra­tional ideal for all mor­tal be­ings on all worlds.

140:10.4This same evening Thomas asked Je­sus: “Mas­ter, you say that we must be­come as lit­tle chil­dren be­fore we can gain en­trance to the Fa­ther’s king­dom, and yet you have warned us not to be de­ceived by false proph­ets nor to be­come guilty of cast­ing our pearls be­fore swine. Now, I am hon­estly puz­zled. I can­not un­der­stand your teach­ing.” Je­sus replied to Thomas: “How long shall I bear with you! Ever you in­sist on mak­ing lit­eral all that I teach. When I asked you to be­come as lit­tle chil­dren as the price of en­ter­ing the king­dom, I re­ferred not to ease of de­cep­tion, mere will­ing­ness to be­lieve, nor to quick­ness to trust pleas­ing strangers. What I did de­sire that you should gather from the il­lus­tra­tion was the child-fa­ther re­la­tion­ship. You are the child, and it is your Fa­ther’s king­dom you seek to en­ter. There is pres­ent that nat­u­ral af­fec­tion be­tween ev­ery nor­mal child and its fa­ther which in­sures an un­der­stand­ing and lov­ing re­la­tion­ship, and which for­ever pre­cludes all dis­po­si­tion to bar­gain for the Fa­ther’s love and mercy. And the gospel you are go­ing forth to preach has to do with a sal­va­tion grow­ing out of the faith-re­al­iza­tion of this very and eter­nal child-fa­ther re­la­tion­ship.”

140:10.5The one char­ac­ter­is­tic of Je­sus’ teach­ing was that the moral­ity of his phi­los­o­phy orig­i­nated in the per­sonal re­la­tion of the in­di­vid­ual to God—this very child-fa­ther re­la­tion­ship. Je­sus placed em­pha­sis on the in­di­vid­ual, not on the race or na­tion. While eat­ing sup­per, Je­sus had the talk with Mat­thew in which he ex­plained that the moral­ity of any act is de­ter­mined by the in­di­vid­ual’s mo­tive. Je­sus’ moral­ity was al­ways pos­i­tive. The golden rule as re­stated by Je­sus de­mands ac­tive so­cial con­tact; the older neg­a­tive rule could be obeyed in iso­la­tion. Je­sus stripped moral­ity of all rules and cer­e­monies and el­e­vated it to ma­jes­tic lev­els of spir­i­tual think­ing and truly righ­teous liv­ing.

140:10.6This new re­li­gion of Je­sus was not with­out its prac­ti­cal im­pli­ca­tions, but what­ever of prac­ti­cal po­lit­i­cal, so­cial, or eco­nomic value there is to be found in his teach­ing is the nat­u­ral out­work­ing of this in­ner ex­pe­ri­ence of the soul as it man­i­fests the fruits of the spirit in the spon­ta­neous daily min­istry of gen­uine per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.

140:10.7Af­ter Je­sus and Mat­thew had fin­ished talk­ing, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes asked, “But, Mas­ter, are all men the sons of God?” And Je­sus an­swered: “Yes, Si­mon, all men are the sons of God, and that is the good news you are go­ing to pro­claim.” But the apos­tles could not grasp such a doc­trine; it was a new, strange, and startling an­nounce­ment. And it was be­cause of his de­sire to im­press this truth upon them that Je­sus taught his fol­low­ers to treat all men as their broth­ers.

140:10.8In re­sponse to a ques­tion asked by An­drew, the Mas­ter made it clear that the moral­ity of his teach­ing was in­sep­a­ra­ble from the re­li­gion of his liv­ing. He taught moral­ity, not from the na­ture of man, but from the re­la­tion of man to God.

140:10.9John asked Je­sus, “Mas­ter, what is the king­dom of heaven?” And Je­sus an­swered: “The king­dom of heaven con­sists in these three es­sen­tials: first, rec­og­ni­tion of the fact of the sov­er­eignty of God; sec­ond, be­lief in the truth of son­ship with God; and third, faith in the ef­fec­tive­ness of the su­preme hu­man de­sire to do the will of God—to be like God. And this is the good news of the gospel: that by faith ev­ery mor­tal may have all these es­sen­tials of sal­va­tion.”

140:10.10And now the week of wait­ing was over, and they pre­pared to de­part on the mor­row for Je­ru­sa­lem.