Beginning the Public Work

141:5.1One of the most event­ful of all the evening con­fer­ences at Am­athus was the ses­sion hav­ing to do with the dis­cus­sion of spir­i­tual unity. James Zeb­e­dee had asked, “Mas­ter, how shall we learn to see alike and thereby en­joy more har­mony among our­selves?” When Je­sus heard this ques­tion, he was stirred within his spirit, so much so that he replied: “James, James, when did I teach you that you should all see alike? I have come into the world to pro­claim spir­i­tual lib­erty to the end that mor­tals may be em­pow­ered to live in­di­vid­ual lives of orig­i­nal­ity and free­dom be­fore God. I do not de­sire that so­cial har­mony and fra­ter­nal peace shall be pur­chased by the sac­ri­fice of free per­son­al­ity and spir­i­tual orig­i­nal­ity. What I re­quire of you, my apos­tles, is spirit unity—and that you can ex­pe­ri­ence in the joy of your united ded­i­ca­tion to the whole­hearted do­ing of the will of my Fa­ther in heaven. You do not have to see alike or feel alike or even think alike in or­der spir­i­tu­ally to be alike. Spir­i­tual unity is de­rived from the con­scious­ness that each of you is in­dwelt, and in­creas­ingly dom­i­nated, by the spirit gift of the heav­enly Fa­ther. Your apos­tolic har­mony must grow out of the fact that the spirit hope of each of you is iden­ti­cal in ori­gin, na­ture, and des­tiny.

141:5.2“In this way you may ex­pe­ri­ence a per­fected unity of spirit pur­pose and spirit un­der­stand­ing grow­ing out of the mu­tual con­scious­ness of the iden­tity of each of your in­dwelling Par­a­dise spir­its; and you may en­joy all of this pro­found spir­i­tual unity in the very face of the ut­most di­ver­sity of your in­di­vid­ual at­ti­tudes of in­tel­lec­tual think­ing, tem­per­a­men­tal feel­ing, and so­cial con­duct. Your per­son­al­i­ties may be re­fresh­ingly di­verse and markedly dif­fer­ent, while your spir­i­tual na­tures and spirit fruits of di­vine wor­ship and broth­erly love may be so uni­fied that all who be­hold your lives will of a surety take cog­nizance of this spirit iden­tity and soul unity; they will rec­og­nize that you have been with me and have thereby learned, and ac­cept­ably, how to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. You can achieve the unity of the ser­vice of God even while you ren­der such ser­vice in ac­cor­dance with the tech­nique of your own orig­i­nal en­dow­ments of mind, body, and soul.

141:5.3“Your spirit unity im­plies two things, which al­ways will be found to har­mo­nize in the lives of in­di­vid­ual be­liev­ers: First, you are pos­sessed with a com­mon mo­tive for life ser­vice; you all de­sire above ev­ery­thing to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. Sec­ond, you all have a com­mon goal of ex­is­tence; you all pur­pose to find the Fa­ther in heaven, thereby prov­ing to the uni­verse that you have be­come like him.”

141:5.4Many times dur­ing the train­ing of the twelve Je­sus re­verted to this theme. Re­peat­edly he told them it was not his de­sire that those who be­lieved in him should be­come dog­ma­tized and stan­dard­ized in ac­cor­dance with the re­li­gious in­ter­pre­ta­tions of even good men. Again and again he warned his apos­tles against the for­mu­la­tion of creeds and the es­tab­lish­ment of tra­di­tions as a means of guid­ing and con­trol­ling be­liev­ers in the gospel of the king­dom.