The Faith of Jesus

196:1.1Je­sus’ de­vo­tion to the Fa­ther’s will and the ser­vice of man was even more than mor­tal de­ci­sion and hu­man de­ter­mi­na­tion; it was a whole­hearted con­se­cra­tion of him­self to such an un­re­served be­stowal of love. No mat­ter how great the fact of the sov­er­eignty of Mi­chael, you must not take the hu­man Je­sus away from men. The Mas­ter has as­cended on high as a man, as well as God; he be­longs to men; men be­long to him. How un­for­tu­nate that re­li­gion it­self should be so mis­in­ter­preted as to take the hu­man Je­sus away from strug­gling mor­tals! Let not the dis­cus­sions of the hu­man­ity or the di­vin­ity of the Christ ob­scure the sav­ing truth that Je­sus of Naz­a­reth was a re­li­gious man who, by faith, achieved the know­ing and the do­ing of the will of God; he was the most truly re­li­gious man who has ever lived on Uran­tia.

196:1.2The time is ripe to wit­ness the fig­u­ra­tive res­ur­rec­tion of the hu­man Je­sus from his burial tomb amidst the the­o­log­i­cal tra­di­tions and the re­li­gious dog­mas of nine­teen cen­turies. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth must not be longer sac­ri­ficed to even the splen­did con­cept of the glo­ri­fied Christ. What a tran­scen­dent ser­vice if, through this rev­e­la­tion, the Son of Man should be re­cov­ered from the tomb of tra­di­tional the­ol­ogy and be pre­sented as the liv­ing Je­sus to the church that bears his name, and to all other re­li­gions! Surely the Chris­tian fel­low­ship of be­liev­ers will not hes­i­tate to make such ad­just­ments of faith and of prac­tices of liv­ing as will en­able it to “fol­low af­ter” the Mas­ter in the dem­on­stra­tion of his real life of re­li­gious de­vo­tion to the do­ing of his Fa­ther’s will and of con­se­cra­tion to the un­selfish ser­vice of man. Do pro­fessed Chris­tians fear the ex­po­sure of a self-suf­fi­cient and un­con­se­crated fel­low­ship of so­cial re­spectabil­ity and self­ish eco­nomic mal­ad­just­ment? Does in­sti­tu­tional Chris­tian­ity fear the pos­si­ble jeop­ardy, or even the over­throw, of tra­di­tional ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal au­thor­ity if the Je­sus of Gal­i­lee is re­in­stated in the minds and souls of mor­tal men as the ideal of per­sonal re­li­gious liv­ing? In­deed, the so­cial read­just­ments, the eco­nomic trans­for­ma­tions, the moral re­ju­ve­na­tions, and the re­li­gious re­vi­sions of Chris­tian civ­i­liza­tion would be dras­tic and rev­o­lu­tion­ary if the liv­ing re­li­gion of Je­sus should sud­denly sup­plant the the­o­logic re­li­gion about Je­sus.

196:1.3To “fol­low Je­sus” means to per­son­ally share his re­li­gious faith and to en­ter into the spirit of the Mas­ter’s life of un­selfish ser­vice for man. One of the most im­por­tant things in hu­man liv­ing is to find out what Je­sus be­lieved, to dis­cover his ide­als, and to strive for the achieve­ment of his ex­alted life pur­pose. Of all hu­man knowl­edge, that which is of great­est value is to know the re­li­gious life of Je­sus and how he lived it.

196:1.4The com­mon peo­ple heard Je­sus gladly, and they will again re­spond to the pre­sen­ta­tion of his sin­cere hu­man life of con­se­crated re­li­gious mo­ti­va­tion if such truths shall again be pro­claimed to the world. The peo­ple heard him gladly be­cause he was one of them, an un­pre­ten­tious lay­man; the world’s great­est re­li­gious teacher was in­deed a lay­man.

196:1.5It should not be the aim of king­dom be­liev­ers lit­er­ally to im­i­tate the out­ward life of Je­sus in the flesh but rather to share his faith; to trust God as he trusted God and to be­lieve in men as he be­lieved in men. Je­sus never ar­gued about ei­ther the fa­ther­hood of God or the broth­er­hood of men; he was a liv­ing il­lus­tra­tion of the one and a pro­found dem­on­stra­tion of the other.

196:1.6Just as men must pro­gress from the con­scious­ness of the hu­man to the re­al­iza­tion of the di­vine, so did Je­sus as­cend from the na­ture of man to the con­scious­ness of the na­ture of God. And the Mas­ter made this great as­cent from the hu­man to the di­vine by the con­joint achieve­ment of the faith of his mor­tal in­tel­lect and the acts of his in­dwelling Ad­juster. The fact-re­al­iza­tion of the at­tain­ment of to­tal­ity of di­vin­ity (all the while fully con­scious of the re­al­ity of hu­man­ity) was at­tended by seven stages of faith con­scious­ness of pro­gres­sive di­viniza­tion. These stages of pro­gres­sive self-re­al­iza­tion were marked off by the fol­low­ing ex­traor­di­nary events in the Mas­ter’s be­stowal ex­pe­ri­ence:

196:1.71. The ar­rival of the Thought Ad­juster.

196:1.82. The mes­sen­ger of Im­manuel who ap­peared to him at Je­ru­sa­lem when he was about twelve years old.

196:1.93. The man­i­fes­ta­tions at­ten­dant upon his bap­tism.

196:1.104. The ex­pe­ri­ences on the Mount of Trans­fig­u­ra­tion.

196:1.115. The mor­ontia res­ur­rec­tion.

196:1.126. The spirit as­cen­sion.

196:1.137. The fi­nal em­brace of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther, con­fer­ring un­lim­ited sov­er­eignty of his uni­verse.