The Faith of Jesus

196:0.1Je­sus en­joyed a sub­lime and whole­hearted faith in God. He ex­pe­ri­enced the or­di­nary ups and downs of mor­tal ex­is­tence, but he never re­li­giously doubted the cer­tainty of God’s watch­care and guid­ance. His faith was the out­growth of the in­sight born of the ac­tiv­ity of the di­vine pres­ence, his in­dwelling Ad­juster. His faith was nei­ther tra­di­tional nor merely in­tel­lec­tual; it was wholly per­sonal and purely spir­i­tual.

196:0.2The hu­man Je­sus saw God as be­ing holy, just, and great, as well as be­ing true, beau­ti­ful, and good. All these at­tri­butes of di­vin­ity he fo­cused in his mind as the “will of the Fa­ther in heaven.” Je­sus’ God was at one and the same time “The Holy One of Is­rael” and “The liv­ing and lov­ing Fa­ther in heaven.” The con­cept of God as a Fa­ther was not orig­i­nal with Je­sus, but he ex­alted and el­e­vated the idea into a sub­lime ex­pe­ri­ence by achiev­ing a new rev­e­la­tion of God and by pro­claim­ing that ev­ery mor­tal crea­ture is a child of this Fa­ther of love, a son of God.

196:0.3Je­sus did not cling to faith in God as would a strug­gling soul at war with the uni­verse and at death grips with a hos­tile and sin­ful world; he did not re­sort to faith merely as a con­so­la­tion in the midst of dif­fi­cul­ties or as a com­fort in threat­ened de­spair; faith was not just an il­lu­sory com­pen­sa­tion for the un­pleas­ant re­al­i­ties and the sor­rows of liv­ing. In the very face of all the nat­u­ral dif­fi­cul­ties and the tem­po­ral con­tra­dic­tions of mor­tal ex­is­tence, he ex­pe­ri­enced the tran­quil­lity of su­preme and un­ques­tioned trust in God and felt the tremen­dous thrill of liv­ing, by faith, in the very pres­ence of the heav­enly Fa­ther. And this tri­umphant faith was a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of ac­tual spirit at­tain­ment. Je­sus’ great con­tri­bu­tion to the val­ues of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence was not that he re­vealed so many new ideas about the Fa­ther in heaven, but rather that he so mag­nif­i­cently and hu­manly demon­strated a new and higher type of liv­ing faith in God. Never on all the worlds of this uni­verse, in the life of any one mor­tal, did God ever be­come such a liv­ing re­al­ity as in the hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

196:0.4In the Mas­ter’s life on Uran­tia, this and all other worlds of the lo­cal cre­ation dis­cover a new and higher type of re­li­gion, re­li­gion based on per­sonal spir­i­tual re­la­tions with the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and wholly val­i­dated by the su­preme au­thor­ity of gen­uine per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. This liv­ing faith of Je­sus was more than an in­tel­lec­tual re­flec­tion, and it was not a mys­tic med­i­ta­tion.

196:0.5The­ol­ogy may fix, for­mu­late, de­fine, and dog­ma­tize faith, but in the hu­man life of Je­sus faith was per­sonal, liv­ing, orig­i­nal, spon­ta­neous, and purely spir­i­tual. This faith was not rev­er­ence for tra­di­tion nor a mere in­tel­lec­tual be­lief which he held as a sa­cred creed, but rather a sub­lime ex­pe­ri­ence and a pro­found con­vic­tion which se­curely held him. His faith was so real and all-en­com­pass­ing that it ab­so­lutely swept away any spir­i­tual doubts and ef­fec­tively de­stroyed ev­ery con­flict­ing de­sire. Noth­ing was able to tear him away from the spir­i­tual an­chor­age of this fer­vent, sub­lime, and un­daunted faith. Even in the face of ap­par­ent de­feat or in the throes of dis­ap­point­ment and threat­en­ing de­spair, he calmly stood in the di­vine pres­ence free from fear and fully con­scious of spir­i­tual in­vin­ci­bil­ity. Je­sus en­joyed the in­vig­o­rat­ing as­sur­ance of the pos­ses­sion of un­flinch­ing faith, and in each of life’s try­ing sit­u­a­tions he un­fail­ingly ex­hib­ited an un­ques­tion­ing loy­alty to the Fa­ther’s will. And this su­perb faith was un­daunted even by the cruel and crush­ing threat of an ig­no­min­ious death.

196:0.6In a re­li­gious ge­nius, strong spir­i­tual faith so many times leads di­rectly to dis­as­trous fa­nati­cism, to ex­ag­ger­a­tion of the re­li­gious ego, but it was not so with Je­sus. He was not un­fa­vor­ably af­fected in his prac­ti­cal life by his ex­traor­di­nary faith and spirit at­tain­ment be­cause this spir­i­tual ex­al­ta­tion was a wholly un­con­scious and spon­ta­neous soul ex­pres­sion of his per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence with God.

196:0.7The all-con­sum­ing and in­domitable spir­i­tual faith of Je­sus never be­came fa­nat­i­cal, for it never at­tempted to run away with his well-bal­anced in­tel­lec­tual judg­ments con­cern­ing the pro­por­tional val­ues of prac­ti­cal and com­mon­place so­cial, eco­nomic, and moral life sit­u­a­tions. The Son of Man was a splen­didly uni­fied hu­man per­son­al­ity; he was a per­fectly en­dowed di­vine be­ing; he was also mag­nif­i­cently co-or­di­nated as a com­bined hu­man and di­vine be­ing func­tion­ing on earth as a sin­gle per­son­al­ity. Al­ways did the Mas­ter co-or­di­nate the faith of the soul with the wis­dom-ap­praisals of sea­soned ex­pe­ri­ence. Per­sonal faith, spir­i­tual hope, and moral de­vo­tion were al­ways cor­re­lated in a match­less re­li­gious unity of har­mo­nious as­so­ci­a­tion with the keen re­al­iza­tion of the re­al­ity and sa­cred­ness of all hu­man loy­al­ties—per­sonal honor, fam­ily love, re­li­gious obli­ga­tion, so­cial duty, and eco­nomic ne­ces­sity.

196:0.8The faith of Je­sus vi­su­al­ized all spirit val­ues as be­ing found in the king­dom of God; there­fore he said, “Seek first the king­dom of heaven.” Je­sus saw in the ad­vanced and ideal fel­low­ship of the king­dom the achieve­ment and ful­fill­ment of the “will of God.” The very heart of the prayer which he taught his dis­ci­ples was, “Your king­dom come; your will be done.” Hav­ing thus con­ceived of the king­dom as com­pris­ing the will of God, he de­voted him­self to the cause of its re­al­iza­tion with amaz­ing self-for­get­ful­ness and un­bounded en­thu­si­asm. But in all his in­tense mis­sion and through­out his ex­traor­di­nary life there never ap­peared the fury of the fa­natic nor the su­per­fi­cial froth­i­ness of the re­li­gious ego­tist.

196:0.9The Mas­ter’s en­tire life was con­sis­tently con­di­tioned by this liv­ing faith, this sub­lime re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. This spir­i­tual at­ti­tude wholly dom­i­nated his think­ing and feel­ing, his be­liev­ing and pray­ing, his teach­ing and preach­ing. This per­sonal faith of a son in the cer­tainty and se­cu­rity of the guid­ance and pro­tec­tion of the heav­enly Fa­ther im­parted to his unique life a pro­found en­dow­ment of spir­i­tual re­al­ity. And yet, de­spite this very deep con­scious­ness of close re­la­tion­ship with di­vin­ity, this Galilean, God’s Galilean, when ad­dressed as Good Teacher, in­stantly replied, “Why do you call me good?” When we stand con­fronted by such splen­did self-for­get­ful­ness, we be­gin to un­der­stand how the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther found it pos­si­ble so fully to man­i­fest him­self to him and re­veal him­self through him to the mor­tals of the realms.

196:0.10Je­sus brought to God, as a man of the realm, the great­est of all of­fer­ings: the con­se­cra­tion and ded­i­ca­tion of his own will to the ma­jes­tic ser­vice of do­ing the di­vine will. Je­sus al­ways and con­sis­tently in­ter­preted re­li­gion wholly in terms of the Fa­ther’s will. When you study the ca­reer of the Mas­ter, as con­cerns prayer or any other fea­ture of the re­li­gious life, look not so much for what he taught as for what he did. Je­sus never prayed as a re­li­gious duty. To him prayer was a sin­cere ex­pres­sion of spir­i­tual at­ti­tude, a dec­la­ra­tion of soul loy­alty, a recital of per­sonal de­vo­tion, an ex­pres­sion of thanks­giv­ing, an avoid­ance of emo­tional ten­sion, a pre­ven­tion of con­flict, an ex­al­ta­tion of in­tel­lec­tion, an en­no­ble­ment of de­sire, a vin­di­ca­tion of moral de­ci­sion, an en­rich­ment of thought, an in­vig­o­ra­tion of higher in­cli­na­tions, a con­se­cra­tion of im­pulse, a clar­i­fi­ca­tion of view­point, a dec­la­ra­tion of faith, a tran­scen­den­tal sur­ren­der of will, a sub­lime as­ser­tion of con­fi­dence, a rev­e­la­tion of cour­age, the procla­ma­tion of dis­cov­ery, a con­fes­sion of su­preme de­vo­tion, the val­i­da­tion of con­se­cra­tion, a tech­nique for the ad­just­ment of dif­fi­cul­ties, and the mighty mo­bi­liza­tion of the com­bined soul pow­ers to with­stand all hu­man ten­den­cies to­ward self­ish­ness, evil, and sin. He lived just such a life of prayer­ful con­se­cra­tion to the do­ing of his Fa­ther’s will and ended his life tri­umphantly with just such a prayer. The se­cret of his un­par­al­leled re­li­gious life was this con­scious­ness of the pres­ence of God; and he at­tained it by in­tel­li­gent prayer and sin­cere wor­ship—un­bro­ken com­mu­nion with God—and not by lead­ings, voices, vi­sions, or ex­traor­di­nary re­li­gious prac­tices.

196:0.11In the earthly life of Je­sus, re­li­gion was a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, a di­rect and per­sonal move­ment from spir­i­tual rev­er­ence to prac­ti­cal righ­teous­ness. The faith of Je­sus bore the tran­scen­dent fruits of the di­vine spirit. His faith was not im­ma­ture and cred­u­lous like that of a child, but in many ways it did re­sem­ble the un­sus­pect­ing trust of the child mind. Je­sus trusted God much as the child trusts a par­ent. He had a pro­found con­fi­dence in the uni­verse—just such a trust as the child has in its pa­ren­tal en­vi­ron­ment. Je­sus’ whole­hearted faith in the fun­da­men­tal good­ness of the uni­verse very much re­sem­bled the child’s trust in the se­cu­rity of its earthly sur­round­ings. He de­pended on the heav­enly Fa­ther as a child leans upon its earthly par­ent, and his fer­vent faith never for one mo­ment doubted the cer­tainty of the heav­enly Fa­ther’s over­care. He was not dis­turbed se­ri­ously by fears, doubts, and skep­ti­cism. Un­be­lief did not in­hibit the free and orig­i­nal ex­pres­sion of his life. He com­bined the stal­wart and in­tel­li­gent cour­age of a full-grown man with the sin­cere and trust­ing op­ti­mism of a be­liev­ing child. His faith grew to such heights of trust that it was de­void of fear.

196:0.12The faith of Je­sus at­tained the pu­rity of a child’s trust. His faith was so ab­so­lute and un­doubt­ing that it re­sponded to the charm of the con­tact of fel­low be­ings and to the won­ders of the uni­verse. His sense of de­pen­dence on the di­vine was so com­plete and so con­fi­dent that it yielded the joy and the as­sur­ance of ab­so­lute per­sonal se­cu­rity. There was no hes­i­tat­ing pre­tense in his re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. In this gi­ant in­tel­lect of the full-grown man the faith of the child reigned su­preme in all mat­ters re­lat­ing to the re­li­gious con­scious­ness. It is not strange that he once said, “Ex­cept you be­come as a lit­tle child, you shall not en­ter the king­dom.” Not­with­stand­ing that Je­sus’ faith was child­like, it was in no sense child­ish.

196:0.13Je­sus does not re­quire his dis­ci­ples to be­lieve in him but rather to be­lieve with him, be­lieve in the re­al­ity of the love of God and in full con­fi­dence ac­cept the se­cu­rity of the as­sur­ance of son­ship with the heav­enly Fa­ther. The Mas­ter de­sires that all his fol­low­ers should fully share his tran­scen­dent faith. Je­sus most touch­ingly chal­lenged his fol­low­ers, not only to be­lieve what he be­lieved, but also to be­lieve as he be­lieved. This is the full sig­nif­i­cance of his one su­preme re­quire­ment, “Fol­low me.”

196:0.14Je­sus’ earthly life was de­voted to one great pur­pose—do­ing the Fa­ther’s will, liv­ing the hu­man life re­li­giously and by faith. The faith of Je­sus was trust­ing, like that of a child, but it was wholly free from pre­sump­tion. He made ro­bust and manly de­ci­sions, coura­geously faced man­i­fold dis­ap­point­ments, res­o­lutely sur­mounted ex­traor­di­nary dif­fi­cul­ties, and un­flinch­ingly con­fronted the stern re­quire­ments of duty. It re­quired a strong will and an un­fail­ing con­fi­dence to be­lieve what Je­sus be­lieved and as he be­lieved.