righteousness

2:3.1God is righ­teous; there­fore is he just. “The Lord is righ­teous in all his ways.” “‘I have not done with­out cause all that I have done,’ says the Lord.” “The judg­ments of the Lord are true and righ­teous al­to­gether.” The jus­tice of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther can­not be in­flu­enced by the acts and per­for­mances of his crea­tures, “for there is no in­iq­uity with the Lord our God, no re­spect of per­sons, no tak­ing of gifts.”

2:3.2How fu­tile to make puerile ap­peals to such a God to mod­ify his change­less de­crees so that we can avoid the just con­se­quences of the op­er­a­tion of his wise nat­u­ral laws and righ­teous spir­i­tual man­dates! “Be not de­ceived; God is not mocked, for what­so­ever a man sows that shall he also reap.” True, even in the jus­tice of reap­ing the har­vest of wrong­do­ing, this di­vine jus­tice is al­ways tem­pered with mercy. In­fi­nite wis­dom is the eter­nal ar­biter which de­ter­mines the pro­por­tions of jus­tice and mercy which shall be meted out in any given cir­cum­stance. The great­est pun­ish­ment (in re­al­ity an in­ev­i­ta­ble con­se­quence) for wrong­do­ing and de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion against the gov­ern­ment of God is loss of ex­is­tence as an in­di­vid­ual sub­ject of that gov­ern­ment. The fi­nal re­sult of whole­hearted sin is an­ni­hi­la­tion. In the last anal­y­sis, such sin-iden­ti­fied in­di­vid­u­als have de­stroyed them­selves by be­com­ing wholly un­real through their em­brace of in­iq­uity. The fac­tual dis­ap­pear­ance of such a crea­ture is, how­ever, al­ways de­layed un­til the or­dained or­der of jus­tice cur­rent in that uni­verse has been fully com­plied with.

2:3.3Ces­sa­tion of ex­is­tence is usu­ally de­creed at the dis­pen­sa­tional or ep­ochal ad­ju­di­ca­tion of the realm or realms. On a world such as Uran­tia it comes at the end of a plan­e­tary dis­pen­sa­tion. Ces­sa­tion of ex­is­tence can be de­creed at such times by co-or­di­nate ac­tion of all tri­bu­nals of ju­ris­dic­tion, ex­tend­ing from the plan­e­tary coun­cil up through the courts of the Cre­ator Son to the judg­ment tri­bu­nals of the An­cients of Days. The man­date of dis­so­lu­tion orig­i­nates in the higher courts of the super­uni­verse fol­low­ing an un­bro­ken con­fir­ma­tion of the in­dict­ment orig­i­nat­ing on the sphere of the wrong­doer’s res­i­dence; and then, when sen­tence of ex­tinc­tion has been con­firmed on high, the ex­e­cu­tion is by the di­rect act of those judges res­i­den­tial on, and op­er­at­ing from, the head­quar­ters of the super­uni­verse.

2:3.4When this sen­tence is fi­nally con­firmed, the sin-iden­ti­fied be­ing in­stantly be­comes as though he had not been. There is no res­ur­rec­tion from such a fate; it is ev­er­last­ing and eter­nal. The liv­ing en­ergy fac­tors of iden­tity are re­solved by the trans­for­ma­tions of time and the meta­mor­phoses of space into the cos­mic po­ten­tials whence they once emerged. As for the per­son­al­ity of the in­iq­ui­tous one, it is de­prived of a con­tin­u­ing life ve­hi­cle by the crea­ture’s fail­ure to make those choices and fi­nal de­ci­sions which would have as­sured eter­nal life. When the con­tin­ued em­brace of sin by the as­so­ci­ated mind cul­mi­nates in com­plete self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with in­iq­uity, then upon the ces­sa­tion of life, upon cos­mic dis­so­lu­tion, such an iso­lated per­son­al­ity is ab­sorbed into the over­soul of cre­ation, be­com­ing a part of the evolv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of the Su­preme Be­ing. Never again does it ap­pear as a per­son­al­ity; its iden­tity be­comes as though it had never been. In the case of an Ad­juster-in­dwelt per­son­al­ity, the ex­pe­ri­en­tial spirit val­ues sur­vive in the re­al­ity of the con­tin­u­ing Ad­juster.

2:3.5In any uni­verse con­test be­tween ac­tual lev­els of re­al­ity, the per­son­al­ity of the higher level will ul­ti­mately tri­umph over the per­son­al­ity of the lower level. This in­ev­i­ta­ble out­come of uni­verse con­tro­versy is in­her­ent in the fact that di­vin­ity of qual­ity equals the de­gree of re­al­ity or ac­tu­al­ity of any will crea­ture. Undi­luted evil, com­plete er­ror, will­ful sin, and un­mit­i­gated in­iq­uity are in­her­ently and au­to­mat­i­cally sui­ci­dal. Such at­ti­tudes of cos­mic un­re­al­ity can sur­vive in the uni­verse only be­cause of tran­sient mercy-tol­er­ance pend­ing the ac­tion of the jus­tice-de­ter­min­ing and fair­ness-find­ing mech­a­nisms of the uni­verse tri­bu­nals of righ­teous ad­ju­di­ca­tion.

2:3.6The rule of the Cre­ator Sons in the lo­cal uni­verses is one of cre­ation and spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion. These Sons de­vote them­selves to the ef­fec­tive ex­e­cu­tion of the Par­a­dise plan of pro­gres­sive mor­tal as­cen­sion, to the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of rebels and wrong thinkers, but when all such lov­ing ef­forts are fi­nally and for­ever re­jected, the fi­nal de­cree of dis­so­lu­tion is ex­e­cuted by forces act­ing un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the An­cients of Days.

• God is source of moral law

2:6.5Righ­teous­ness im­plies that God is the source of the moral law of the uni­verse. Truth ex­hibits God as a re­vealer, as a teacher. But love gives and craves af­fec­tion, seeks un­der­stand­ing fel­low­ship such as ex­ists be­tween par­ent and child. Righ­teous­ness may be the di­vine thought, but love is a fa­ther’s at­ti­tude. The er­ro­neous sup­po­si­tion that the righ­teous­ness of God was ir­rec­on­cil­able with the self­less love of the heav­enly Fa­ther, pre­sup­posed ab­sence of unity in the na­ture of De­ity and led di­rectly to the elab­o­ra­tion of the atone­ment doc­trine, which is a philo­sophic as­sault upon both the unity and the free-will­ness of God.

• God’s r. not dominated by strict retributive justice

2:6.6The af­fec­tion­ate heav­enly Fa­ther, whose spirit in­dwells his chil­dren on earth, is not a di­vided per­son­al­ity—one of jus­tice and one of mercy—nei­ther does it re­quire a me­di­a­tor to se­cure the Fa­ther’s fa­vor or for­give­ness. Di­vine righ­teous­ness is not dom­i­nated by strict re­tribu­tive jus­tice; God as a fa­ther tran­scends God as a judge.

• God’s love of r. exhibited as equal hatred for sin

2:6.7God is never wrath­ful, venge­ful, or an­gry. It is true that wis­dom does of­ten re­strain his love, while jus­tice con­di­tions his re­jected mercy. His love of righ­teous­ness can­not help be­ing ex­hib­ited as equal ha­tred for sin. The Fa­ther is not an in­con­sis­tent per­son­al­ity; the di­vine unity is per­fect. In the Par­a­dise Trin­ity there is ab­so­lute unity de­spite the eter­nal iden­ti­ties of the co-or­di­nates of God.

• requires contrast of potential evil

3:5.138. Is un­selfish­ness—the spirit of self-for­get­ful­ness—de­sir­able? Then must mor­tal man live face to face with the in­ces­sant clam­or­ing of an in­escapable self for recog­ni­tion and honor. Man could not dy­nam­i­cally choose the di­vine life if there were no self-life to for­sake. Man could never lay sav­ing hold on right­eous­ness if there were no po­ten­tial evil to ex­alt and dif­fer­en­ti­ate the good by con­trast.

• eyes of the Lord are over the righteous

4:1.4There is no lim­i­ta­tion of the forces and per­son­al­i­ties which the Fa­ther may use to up­hold his pur­pose and sus­tain his crea­tures. “The eter­nal God is our refuge, and un­der­neath are the ev­er­last­ing arms.” “He who dwells in the se­cret place of the Most High shall abide un­der the shadow of the Al­mighty.” “Be­hold, he who keeps us shall nei­ther slum­ber nor sleep.” “We know that all things work to­gether for good to those who love God,” “for the eyes of the Lord are over the righ­teous, and his ears are open to their prayers.”

• best way is the right way

12:7.2In all his deal­ings with all his be­ings it is true that the laws of God are not in­her­ently ar­bi­trary. To you, with your lim­ited vi­sion and fi­nite view­point, the acts of God must of­ten ap­pear to be dic­ta­to­rial and ar­bi­trary. The laws of God are merely the habits of God, his way of re­peat­edly do­ing things; and he ever does all things well. You ob­serve that God does the same thing in the same way, re­peat­edly, sim­ply be­cause that is the best way to do that par­tic­u­lar thing in a given cir­cum­stance; and the best way is the right way, and there­fore does in­fi­nite wis­dom al­ways or­der it done in that pre­cise and per­fect man­ner. You should also re­mem­ber that na­ture is not the ex­clu­sive act of De­ity; other in­flu­ences are pres­ent in those phe­nom­ena which man calls na­ture.

• in Havona, natural enjoyment of doing things rightly

14:5.3The reg­u­la­tions of the cen­tral uni­verse are fit­tingly and in­her­ently nat­u­ral; the rules of con­duct are not ar­bi­trary. In ev­ery re­quire­ment of Ha­vona there is dis­closed the rea­son of righ­teous­ness and the rule of jus­tice. And these two fac­tors, com­bined, equal what on Uran­tia would be de­nom­i­nated fair­ness. When you ar­rive in Ha­vona, you will nat­u­rally en­joy do­ing things the way they should be done.

• defined as › conformity with the cosmos

16:7.6Virtue is righ­teous­ness—con­for­mity with the cos­mos. To name virtues is not to de­fine them, but to live them is to know them. Virtue is not mere knowl­edge nor yet wis­dom but rather the re­al­ity of pro­gres­sive ex­pe­ri­ence in the at­tain­ment of as­cend­ing lev­els of cos­mic achieve­ment. In the day-by-day life of mor­tal man, virtue is re­al­ized by the con­sis­tent choos­ing of good rather than evil, and such choos­ing abil­ity is ev­i­dence of the pos­ses­sion of a moral na­ture.

16:7.7Man’s choos­ing be­tween good and evil is in­flu­enced, not only by the keen­ness of his moral na­ture, but also by such in­flu­ences as ig­no­rance, im­ma­tu­rity, and delu­sion. A sense of pro­por­tion is also con­cerned in the ex­er­cise of virtue be­cause evil may be per­pe­trated when the lesser is cho­sen in the place of the greater as a re­sult of dis­tor­tion or de­cep­tion. The art of rel­a­tive es­ti­ma­tion or com­par­a­tive mea­sure­ment en­ters into the prac­tice of the virtues of the moral realm.

• do not seek to establish r. by laws or force

16:7.9Moral­ity can never be ad­vanced by law or by force. It is a per­sonal and free­will mat­ter and must be dis­sem­i­nated by the con­ta­gion of the con­tact of morally fra­grant per­sons with those who are less morally re­spon­sive, but who are also in some mea­sure de­sirous of do­ing the Fa­ther’s will.

• defined as › yielding satisfaction transcending material reward

39:4.13To the in­hab­ited worlds the quick­en­ers of moral­ity por­tray mor­tal life as an un­bro­ken chain of many links. Your short so­journ on Uran­tia, on this sphere of mor­tal in­fancy, is only a sin­gle link, the very first in the long chain that is to stretch across uni­verses and through the eter­nal ages. It is not so much what you learn in this first life; it is the ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing this life that is im­por­tant. Even the work of this world, paramount though it is, is not nearly so im­por­tant as the way in which you do this work. There is no ma­te­rial re­ward for righ­teous liv­ing, but there is pro­found sat­is­fac­tion—con­scious­ness of achieve­ment—and this tran­scends any con­ceiv­able ma­te­rial re­ward.

• recognized by God

48:7.1210. Righ­teous­ness strikes the har­mony chords of truth, and the mel­ody vi­brates through­out the cos­mos, even to the rec­og­ni­tion of the In­fi­nite.

• certain victory of

52:7.14No mat­ter what the spe­cial nat­u­ral his­tory of an in­di­vid­ual planet may be, no dif­fer­ence whether a realm has been wholly loyal, tainted with evil, or cursed by sin—no mat­ter what the an­tecedents may be—sooner or later the grace of God and the min­istry of an­gels will usher in the day of the ad­vent of the Trin­ity Teacher Sons; and their de­par­ture, fol­low­ing their fi­nal mis­sion, will in­au­gu­rate this su­perb era of light and life.

• Ikhnaton’s religion in daily life

95:5.8The su­preme word of Ikh­na­ton’s re­li­gion in daily life was “righ­teous­ness,” and he rapidly ex­panded the con­cept of right do­ing to em­brace in­ter­na­tional as well as na­tional ethics. This was a gen­er­a­tion of amaz­ing per­sonal piety and was char­ac­ter­ized by a gen­uine as­pi­ra­tion among the more in­tel­li­gent men and women to find God and to know him. In those days so­cial po­si­tion or wealth gave no Egyp­tian any ad­van­tage in the eyes of the law. The fam­ily life of Egypt did much to pre­serve and aug­ment moral cul­ture and was the in­spi­ra­tion of the later su­perb fam­ily life of the Jews in Pales­tine.

• God gives to man

96:7.7Only at Ur did a voice arise to cry out the mercy of God, say­ing: “He shall pray to God and shall find fa­vor with him and shall see his face with joy, for God will give to man di­vine righ­teous­ness.” Thus from Ur there is preached sal­va­tion, di­vine fa­vor, by faith: “He is gra­cious to the re­pen­tant and says, ‘De­liver him from go­ing down in the pit, for I have found a ran­som.’ If any say, ‘I have sinned and per­verted that which was right, and it prof­ited me not,’ God will de­liver his soul from go­ing into the pit, and he shall see the light.” Not since the times of Mel­chiz­e­dek had the Lev­an­tine world heard such a ring­ing and cheer­ing mes­sage of hu­man sal­va­tion as this ex­traor­di­nary teach­ing of Elihu, the prophet of Ur and priest of the Salem be­liev­ers, that is, the rem­nant of the one­time Mel­chiz­e­dek colony in Mes­o­po­ta­mia.

• mind that discerns God is pure mind

101:1.3The di­vine spirit makes con­tact with mor­tal man, not by feel­ings or emo­tions, but in the realm of the high­est and most spir­i­tu­al­ized think­ing. It is your thoughts, not your feel­ings, that lead you God­ward. The di­vine na­ture may be per­ceived only with the eyes of the mind. But the mind that re­ally dis­cerns God, hears the in­dwelling Ad­juster, is the pure mind. “With­out ho­li­ness no man may see the Lord.” All such in­ner and spir­i­tual com­mu­nion is termed spir­i­tual in­sight. Such re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ences re­sult from the im­press made upon the mind of man by the com­bined op­er­a­tions of the Ad­juster and the Spirit of Truth as they func­tion amid and upon the ideas, ide­als, in­sights, and spirit striv­ings of the evolv­ing sons of God.

• Adjuster creates hunger and thirst for

101:2.14Your deep­est na­ture—the di­vine Ad­juster—cre­ates within you a hunger and thirst for righ­teous­ness, a cer­tain crav­ing for di­vine per­fec­tion. Re­li­gion is the faith act of the rec­og­ni­tion of this in­ner urge to di­vine at­tain­ment; and thus is brought about that soul trust and as­sur­ance of which you be­come con­scious as the way of sal­va­tion, the tech­nique of the sur­vival of per­son­al­ity and all those val­ues which you have come to look upon as be­ing true and good.

• defined as › identification with Father’s plan

101:10.7Re­li­gion ef­fec­tu­ally cures man’s sense of ide­al­is­tic iso­la­tion or spir­i­tual lone­li­ness; it en­fran­chises the be­liever as a son of God, a cit­i­zen of a new and mean­ing­ful uni­verse. Re­li­gion as­sures man that, in fol­low­ing the gleam of righ­teous­ness dis­cern­i­ble in his soul, he is thereby iden­ti­fy­ing him­self with the plan of the In­fi­nite and the pur­pose of the Eter­nal. Such a lib­er­ated soul im­me­di­ately be­gins to feel at home in this new uni­verse, his uni­verse.

• hunger and thirst for r. leads to discovery of truth

103:4.2When prim­i­tive man felt that his com­mu­nion with God had been in­ter­rupted, he re­sorted to sac­ri­fice of some kind in an ef­fort to make atone­ment, to re­store friendly re­la­tion­ship. The hunger and thirst for righ­teous­ness leads to the dis­cov­ery of truth, and truth aug­ments ide­als, and this cre­ates new prob­lems for the in­di­vid­ual re­li­gion­ists, for our ide­als tend to grow by ge­o­met­ri­cal pro­gres­sion, while our abil­ity to live up to them is en­hanced only by arith­meti­cal pro­gres­sion.

• defined as › more to be desired than sovereignty of all the earth

131:3.7“A righ­teous soul is more to be de­sired than the sov­er­eignty of all the earth. Im­mor­tal­ity is the goal of sin­cer­ity; death, the end of thought­less liv­ing. Those who are earnest die not; the thought­less are dead al­ready. Blessed are they who have in­sight into the death­less state. Those who tor­ture the liv­ing will hardly find hap­pi­ness af­ter death. The un­selfish go to heaven, where they re­joice in the bliss of in­fi­nite lib­er­al­ity and con­tinue to in­crease in no­ble gen­eros­ity. Ev­ery mor­tal who thinks righ­teously, speaks nobly, and acts un­selfishly shall not only en­joy virtue here dur­ing this brief life but shall also, af­ter the dis­so­lu­tion of the body, con­tinue to en­joy the de­lights of heaven.”

• Moses taught r. always rewarded with prosperity, power

135:5.1In or­der to un­der­stand John’s mes­sage, ac­count should be taken of the sta­tus of the Jew­ish peo­ple at the time he ap­peared upon the stage of ac­tion. For al­most one hun­dred years all Is­rael had been in a quandary; they were at a loss to ex­plain their con­tin­u­ous sub­ju­ga­tion to gen­tile over­lords. Had not Moses taught that righ­teous­ness was al­ways re­warded with pros­per­ity and power? Were they not God’s cho­sen peo­ple? Why was the throne of David des­o­late and va­cant? In the light of the Mo­saic doc­trines and the pre­cepts of the proph­ets the Jews found it dif­fi­cult to ex­plain their long-con­tin­ued na­tional des­o­la­tion.

• rabbis taught that the ignorant could not enjoy

138:8.7The com­mon peo­ple mar­veled at the teach­ing and min­istry of Je­sus and his apos­tles. The rab­bis had long taught the Jews that the ig­no­rant could not be pi­ous or righ­teous. But Je­sus’ apos­tles were both pi­ous and righ­teous; yet they were cheer­fully ig­no­rant of much of the learn­ing of the rab­bis and the wis­dom of the world.

• happy are they who hunger and thirst for

140:3.4“Happy are they who hunger and thirst for righ­teous­ness, for they shall be filled.

• happy are they who hunger and thirst for
• only the poor in spirit hunger for

140:5.82. “Happy are they who hunger and thirst for righ­teous­ness, for they shall be filled.” Only those who feel poor in spirit will ever hunger for righ­teous­ness. Only the hum­ble seek for di­vine strength and crave spir­i­tual power. But it is most dan­ger­ous to know­ingly en­gage in spir­i­tual fast­ing in or­der to im­prove one’s ap­petite for spir­i­tual en­dow­ments. Phys­i­cal fast­ing be­comes dan­ger­ous af­ter four or five days; one is apt to lose all de­sire for food. Pro­longed fast­ing, ei­ther phys­i­cal or spir­i­tual, tends to de­stroy hunger.

• defined as › love, mercy, and truth – the desire to do will of God

140:6.3“I de­mand of you a righ­teous­ness that shall ex­ceed the righ­teous­ness of those who seek to ob­tain the Fa­ther’s fa­vor by alms­giv­ing, prayer, and fast­ing. If you would en­ter the king­dom, you must have a righ­teous­ness that con­sists in love, mercy, and truth—the sin­cere de­sire to do the will of my Fa­ther in heaven.”

• defined as › necessary to do work of kingdom

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.

• defined as › progressive character development

144:4.3In all pray­ing, re­mem­ber that son­ship is a gift. No child has aught to do with earn­ing the sta­tus of son or daugh­ter. The earth child comes into be­ing by the will of its par­ents. Even so, the child of God comes into grace and the new life of the spirit by the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. There­fore must the king­dom of heaven—di­vine son­ship—be re­ceived as by a lit­tle child. You earn righ­teous­ness—pro­gres­sive char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment—but you re­ceive son­ship by grace and through faith.

• better little with r. than riches with wickedness

149:5.2“Si­mon, some per­sons are nat­u­rally more happy than oth­ers. Much, very much, de­pends upon the will­ing­ness of man to be led and di­rected by the Fa­ther’s spirit which lives within him. Have you not read in the Scrip­tures the words of the wise man, ‘The spirit of man is the can­dle of the Lord, search­ing all the in­ward parts’? And also that such spirit-led mor­tals say: ‘The lines are fallen to me in pleas­ant places; yes, I have a goodly her­itage.’ ‘A lit­tle that a righ­teous man has is bet­ter than the riches of many wicked,’ for ‘a good man shall be sat­is­fied from within him­self.’ ‘A merry heart makes a cheer­ful coun­te­nance and is a con­tin­ual feast. Bet­ter is a lit­tle with the rev­er­ence of the Lord than great trea­sure and trou­ble there­with. Bet­ter is a din­ner of herbs where love is than a fat­ted ox and ha­tred there­with. Bet­ter is a lit­tle with righ­teous­ness than great rev­enues with­out rec­ti­tude.’ ‘A merry heart does good like a med­i­cine.’ ‘Bet­ter is a hand­ful with com­po­sure than a super­abun­dance with sor­row and vex­a­tion of spirit.’

• defined as › natural fruit of spirit-born life
• happy are they who hunger and thirst for

150:5.5In sum­ming up his fi­nal state­ment, Je­sus said: “You can­not buy sal­va­tion; you can­not earn righ­teous­ness. Sal­va­tion is the gift of God, and righ­teous­ness is the nat­u­ral fruit of the spirit-born life of son­ship in the king­dom. You are not to be saved be­cause you live a righ­teous life; rather is it that you live a righ­teous life be­cause you have al­ready been saved, have rec­og­nized son­ship as the gift of God and ser­vice in the king­dom as the su­preme de­light of life on earth. When men be­lieve this gospel, which is a rev­e­la­tion of the good­ness of God, they will be led to vol­un­tary re­pen­tance of all known sin. Re­al­iza­tion of son­ship is in­com­pat­i­ble with the de­sire to sin. King­dom be­liev­ers hunger for righ­teous­ness and thirst for di­vine per­fec­tion.”

• do not seek to establish r. by laws or force

153:3.5Je­sus then di­rected his re­marks to all pres­ent. He said: “But hear­ken to me, all of you. It is not that which en­ters into the mouth that spir­i­tu­ally de­files the man, but rather that which pro­ceeds out of the mouth and from the heart.” But even the apos­tles failed fully to grasp the mean­ing of his words, for Si­mon Pe­ter also asked him: “Lest some of your hear­ers be un­nec­es­sar­ily of­fended, would you ex­plain to us the mean­ing of these words?” And then said Je­sus to Pe­ter: “Are you also hard of un­der­stand­ing? Know you not that ev­ery plant which my heav­enly Fa­ther has not planted shall be rooted up? Turn now your at­ten­tion to those who would know the truth. You can­not com­pel men to love the truth. Many of these teach­ers are blind guides. And you know that, if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the pit. But hear­ken while I tell you the truth con­cern­ing those things which morally de­file and spir­i­tu­ally con­tam­i­nate men. I de­clare it is not that which en­ters the body by the mouth or gains ac­cess to the mind through the eyes and ears, that de­files the man. Man is only de­filed by that evil which may orig­i­nate within the heart, and which finds ex­pres­sion in the words and deeds of such un­holy per­sons. Do you not know it is from the heart that there come forth evil thoughts, wicked projects of mur­der, theft, and adul­ter­ies, to­gether with jeal­ousy, pride, anger, re­venge, rail­ings, and false wit­ness? And it is just such things that de­file men, and not that they eat bread with cer­e­mo­ni­ally un­clean hands.”

• exemplify the beautiful wholeness of
• necessity to go to the people reveals lack of

155:1.5“Let me em­phat­i­cally state this eter­nal truth: If you, by truth co-or­di­na­tion, learn to ex­em­plify in your lives this beau­ti­ful whole­ness of righ­teous­ness, your fel­low men will then seek af­ter you that they may gain what you have so ac­quired. The mea­sure where­with truth seek­ers are drawn to you rep­re­sents the mea­sure of your truth en­dow­ment, your righ­teous­ness. The ex­tent to which you have to go with your mes­sage to the peo­ple is, in a way, the mea­sure of your fail­ure to live the whole or righ­teous life, the truth-co-or­di­nated life.”

• believers have implicit faith in triumph of

156:5.12King­dom be­liev­ers should pos­sess an im­plicit faith, a whole-souled be­lief, in the cer­tain tri­umph of righ­teous­ness. King­dom builders must be un­doubt­ing of the truth of the gospel of eter­nal sal­va­tion. Be­liev­ers must in­creas­ingly learn how to step aside from the rush of life—es­cape the ha­rass­ments of ma­te­rial ex­is­tence—while they re­fresh the soul, in­spire the mind, and re­new the spirit by wor­ship­ful com­mu­nion.

• are you a better r. recommender?

156:5.15As the days pass, ev­ery true be­liever be­comes more skill­ful in al­lur­ing his fel­lows into the love of eter­nal truth. Are you more re­source­ful in re­veal­ing good­ness to hu­man­ity to­day than you were yes­ter­day? Are you a bet­ter righ­teous­ness rec­om­mender this year than you were last year? Are you be­com­ing in­creas­ingly artis­tic in your tech­nique of lead­ing hun­gry souls into the spir­i­tual king­dom?

• do not seek to establish r. by laws or force

159:3.2Al­ways re­spect the per­son­al­ity of man. Never should a righ­teous cause be pro­moted by force; spir­i­tual vic­to­ries can be won only by spir­i­tual power. This in­junc­tion against the em­ploy­ment of ma­te­rial in­flu­ences refers to psy­chic force as well as to phys­i­cal force. Over­pow­er­ing ar­gu­ments and men­tal su­pe­ri­or­ity are not to be em­ployed to co­erce men and women into the king­dom. Man’s mind is not to be crushed by the mere weight of logic or over­awed by shrewd elo­quence. While emo­tion as a fac­tor in hu­man de­ci­sions can­not be wholly elim­i­nated, it should not be di­rectly ap­pealed to in the teach­ings of those who would ad­vance the cause of the king­dom. Make your ap­peals di­rectly to the di­vine spirit that dwells within the minds of men. Do not ap­peal to fear, pity, or mere sen­ti­ment. In ap­peal­ing to men, be fair; ex­er­cise self-con­trol and ex­hibit due re­straint; show proper re­spect for the per­son­al­i­ties of your pupils. Re­mem­ber that I have said: “Be­hold, I stand at the door and knock, and if any man will open, I will come in.”

• comes not from passive attitudes

159:5.15One of the apos­tles once asked: “Mas­ter, what should I do if a stranger forced me to carry his pack for a mile?” Je­sus an­swered: “Do not sit down and sigh for re­lief while you be­rate the stranger un­der your breath. Righ­teous­ness comes not from such pas­sive at­ti­tudes. If you can think of noth­ing more ef­fec­tively pos­i­tive to do, you can at least carry the pack a sec­ond mile. That will of a cer­tainty chal­lenge the un­righ­teous and un­godly stranger.”

• make friends with forces of

169:2.5“And it is in this way that the sons of this world some­times show more wis­dom in their prepa­ra­tion for the fu­ture than do the chil­dren of light. I say to you who pro­fess to be ac­quir­ing trea­sure in heaven: Take lessons from those who make friends with the mam­mon of un­righ­teous­ness, and like­wise so con­duct your lives that you make eter­nal friend­ship with the forces of righ­teous­ness in or­der that, when all things earthly fail, you shall be joy­fully re­ceived into the eter­nal habi­ta­tions.

• defined as › acquired by faith

170:3.1Je­sus was al­ways try­ing to im­press upon his apos­tles and dis­ci­ples that they must ac­quire, by faith, a righ­teous­ness which would ex­ceed the righ­teous­ness of slav­ish works which some of the scribes and Phar­isees pa­raded so vain­glo­ri­ously be­fore the world.

• 4 steps of inner

170:3.2Though Je­sus taught that faith, sim­ple child­like be­lief, is the key to the door of the king­dom, he also taught that, hav­ing en­tered the door, there are the pro­gres­sive steps of righ­teous­ness which ev­ery be­liev­ing child must as­cend in or­der to grow up to the full stature of the ro­bust sons of God.

170:3.3It is in the con­sid­er­a­tion of the tech­nique of re­ceiv­ing God’s for­give­ness that the at­tain­ment of the righ­teous­ness of the king­dom is re­vealed. Faith is the price you pay for en­trance into the fam­ily of God; but for­give­ness is the act of God which ac­cepts your faith as the price of ad­mis­sion. And the re­cep­tion of the for­give­ness of God by a king­dom be­liever in­volves a def­i­nite and ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence and con­sists in the fol­low­ing four steps, the king­dom steps of in­ner righ­teous­ness:

• do not seek to establish r. by laws or force

178:1.2The king­doms of this world, be­ing ma­te­rial, may of­ten find it nec­es­sary to em­ploy phys­i­cal force in the ex­e­cu­tion of their laws and for the main­te­nance of or­der. In the king­dom of heaven true be­liev­ers will not re­sort to the em­ploy­ment of phys­i­cal force. The king­dom of heaven, be­ing a spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of the spirit-born sons of God, may be pro­mul­gated only by the power of the spirit. This dis­tinc­tion of pro­ce­dure refers to the re­la­tions of the king­dom of be­liev­ers to the king­doms of sec­u­lar gov­ern­ment and does not nul­lify the right of so­cial groups of be­liev­ers to main­tain or­der in their ranks and ad­min­is­ter dis­ci­pline upon un­ruly and un­wor­thy mem­bers.

178:1.3There is noth­ing in­com­pat­i­ble be­tween son­ship in the spir­i­tual king­dom and cit­i­zen­ship in the sec­u­lar or civil gov­ern­ment. It is the be­liever’s duty to ren­der to Cae­sar the things which are Cae­sar’s and to God the things which are God’s. There can­not be any dis­agree­ment be­tween these two re­quire­ments, the one be­ing ma­te­rial and the other spir­i­tual, un­less it should de­velop that a Cae­sar pre­sumes to usurp the pre­rog­a­tives of God and de­mand that spir­i­tual homage and su­preme wor­ship be ren­dered to him. In such a case you shall wor­ship only God while you seek to en­lighten such mis­guided earthly rulers and in this way lead them also to the rec­og­ni­tion of the Fa­ther in heaven. You shall not ren­der spir­i­tual wor­ship to earthly rulers; nei­ther should you em­ploy the phys­i­cal forces of earthly gov­ern­ments, whose rulers may some­time be­come be­liev­ers, in the work of fur­ther­ing the mis­sion of the spir­i­tual king­dom.

178:1.4Son­ship in the king­dom, from the stand­point of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion, should as­sist you in be­com­ing the ideal cit­i­zens of the king­doms of this world since broth­er­hood and ser­vice are the cor­ner­stones of the gospel of the king­dom. The love call of the spir­i­tual king­dom should prove to be the ef­fec­tive de­stroyer of the hate urge of the un­be­liev­ing and war-minded cit­i­zens of the earthly king­doms. But these ma­te­rial-minded sons in dark­ness will never know of your spir­i­tual light of truth un­less you draw very near them with that un­selfish so­cial ser­vice which is the nat­u­ral out­growth of the bear­ing of the fruits of the spirit in the life ex­pe­ri­ence of each in­di­vid­ual be­liever.

178:1.5As mor­tal and ma­te­rial men, you are in­deed cit­i­zens of the earthly king­doms, and you should be good cit­i­zens, all the bet­ter for hav­ing be­come re­born spirit sons of the heav­enly king­dom. As faith-en­light­ened and spirit-lib­er­ated sons of the king­dom of heaven, you face a dou­ble re­spon­si­bil­ity of duty to man and duty to God while you vol­un­tar­ily as­sume a third and sa­cred obli­ga­tion: ser­vice to the broth­er­hood of God-know­ing be­liev­ers.

178:1.6You may not wor­ship your tem­po­ral rulers, and you should not em­ploy tem­po­ral power in the fur­ther­ance of the spir­i­tual king­dom; but you should man­i­fest the righ­teous min­istry of lov­ing ser­vice to be­liev­ers and un­be­liev­ers alike. In the gospel of the king­dom there re­sides the mighty Spirit of Truth, and pres­ently I will pour out this same spirit upon all flesh. The fruits of the spirit, your sin­cere and lov­ing ser­vice, are the mighty so­cial lever to up­lift the races of dark­ness, and this Spirit of Truth will be­come your power-mul­ti­ply­ing ful­crum.

178:1.7Dis­play wis­dom and ex­hibit sagac­ity in your deal­ings with un­be­liev­ing civil rulers. By dis­cre­tion show your­selves to be ex­pert in iron­ing out mi­nor dis­agree­ments and in ad­just­ing tri­fling mis­un­der­stand­ings. In ev­ery pos­si­ble way—in ev­ery­thing short of your spir­i­tual al­le­giance to the rulers of the uni­verse—seek to live peace­ably with all men. Be you al­ways as wise as ser­pents but as harm­less as doves.

178:1.8You should be made all the bet­ter cit­i­zens of the sec­u­lar gov­ern­ment as a re­sult of be­com­ing en­light­ened sons of the king­dom; so should the rulers of earthly gov­ern­ments be­come all the bet­ter rulers in civil af­fairs as a re­sult of be­liev­ing this gospel of the heav­enly king­dom. The at­ti­tude of un­selfish ser­vice of man and in­tel­li­gent wor­ship of God should make all king­dom be­liev­ers bet­ter world cit­i­zens, while the at­ti­tude of hon­est cit­i­zen­ship and sin­cere de­vo­tion to one’s tem­po­ral duty should help to make such a cit­i­zen the more eas­ily reached by the spirit call to son­ship in the heav­enly king­dom.

178:1.9So long as the rulers of earthly gov­ern­ments seek to ex­er­cise the au­thor­ity of re­li­gious dic­ta­tors, you who be­lieve this gospel can ex­pect only trou­ble, per­se­cu­tion, and even death. But the very light which you bear to the world, and even the very man­ner in which you will suf­fer and die for this gospel of the king­dom, will, in them­selves, even­tu­ally en­lighten the whole world and re­sult in the grad­ual di­vorce­ment of pol­i­tics and re­li­gion. The per­sis­tent preach­ing of this gospel of the king­dom will some day bring to all na­tions a new and un­be­liev­able lib­er­a­tion, in­tel­lec­tual free­dom, and re­li­gious lib­erty.

178:1.10Un­der the soon-com­ing per­se­cu­tions by those who hate this gospel of joy and lib­erty, you will thrive and the king­dom will pros­per. But you will stand in grave dan­ger in sub­se­quent times when most men will speak well of king­dom be­liev­ers and many in high places nom­i­nally ac­cept the gospel of the heav­enly king­dom. Learn to be faith­ful to the king­dom even in times of peace and pros­per­ity. Tempt not the an­gels of your super­vi­sion to lead you in trou­blous ways as a lov­ing dis­ci­pline de­signed to save your ease-drift­ing souls.

178:1.11Re­mem­ber that you are com­mis­sioned to preach this gospel of the king­dom—the su­preme de­sire to do the Fa­ther’s will cou­pled with the su­preme joy of the faith re­al­iza­tion of son­ship with God—and you must not al­low any­thing to di­vert your de­vo­tion to this one duty. Let all man­kind ben­e­fit from the over­flow of your lov­ing spir­i­tual min­istry, en­light­en­ing in­tel­lec­tual com­mu­nion, and up­lift­ing so­cial ser­vice; but none of these hu­man­i­tar­ian labors, nor all of them, should be per­mit­ted to take the place of pro­claim­ing the gospel. These mighty min­is­tra­tions are the so­cial by-prod­ucts of the still more mighty and sub­lime min­is­tra­tions and trans­for­ma­tions wrought in the heart of the king­dom be­liever by the liv­ing Spirit of Truth and by the per­sonal re­al­iza­tion that the faith of a spirit-born man con­fers the as­sur­ance of liv­ing fel­low­ship with the eter­nal God.

178:1.12You must not seek to pro­mul­gate truth nor to es­tab­lish righ­teous­ness by the power of civil gov­ern­ments or by the en­ac­tion of sec­u­lar laws. You may al­ways la­bor to per­suade men’s minds, but you must never dare to com­pel them. You must not for­get the great law of hu­man fair­ness which I have taught you in pos­i­tive form: What­so­ever you would that men should do to you, do even so to them.

• be valiant in defense of

178:1.14You are not to be pas­sive mys­tics or col­or­less as­cetics; you should not be­come dream­ers and drifters, supinely trust­ing in a fic­ti­tious Prov­i­dence to pro­vide even the ne­ces­si­ties of life. You are in­deed to be gen­tle in your deal­ings with erring mor­tals, pa­tient in your in­ter­course with ig­no­rant men, and for­bear­ing un­der provo­ca­tion; but you are also to be valiant in de­fense of righ­teous­ness, mighty in the pro­mul­ga­tion of truth, and ag­gres­sive in the preach­ing of this gospel of the king­dom, even to the ends of the earth.

• nourishes individual creativity

182:1.8Je­sus prayed for unity among his fol­low­ers, but he did not de­sire uni­for­mity. Sin cre­ates a dead level of evil in­er­tia, but righ­teous­ness nour­ishes the cre­ative spirit of in­di­vid­ual ex­pe­ri­ence in the liv­ing re­al­i­ties of eter­nal truth and in the pro­gres­sive com­mu­nion of the di­vine spir­its of the Fa­ther and the Son. In the spir­i­tual fel­low­ship of the be­liever-son with the di­vine Fa­ther there can never be doc­tri­nal fi­nal­ity and sec­tar­ian su­pe­ri­or­ity of group con­scious­ness.

• happy are they who hunger and thirst for

193:2.2“Peace be upon you. You re­joice to know that the Son of Man has risen from the dead be­cause you thereby know that you and your breth­ren shall also sur­vive mor­tal death. But such sur­vival is de­pen­dent on your hav­ing been pre­vi­ously born of the spirit of truth-seek­ing and God-find­ing. The bread of life and the wa­ter thereof are given only to those who hunger for truth and thirst for righ­teous­ness—for God. The fact that the dead rise is not the gospel of the king­dom. These great truths and these uni­verse facts are all re­lated to this gospel in that they are a part of the re­sult of be­liev­ing the good news and are em­braced in the sub­se­quent ex­pe­ri­ence of those who, by faith, be­come, in deed and in truth, the ev­er­last­ing sons of the eter­nal God. My Fa­ther sent me into the world to pro­claim this sal­va­tion of son­ship to all men. And so send I you abroad to preach this sal­va­tion of son­ship. Sal­va­tion is the free gift of God, but those who are born of the spirit will im­me­di­ately be­gin to show forth the fruits of the spirit in lov­ing ser­vice to their fel­low crea­tures. And the fruits of the di­vine spirit which are yielded in the lives of spirit-born and God-know­ing mor­tals are: lov­ing ser­vice, un­selfish de­vo­tion, coura­geous loy­alty, sin­cere fair­ness, en­light­ened hon­esty, undy­ing hope, con­fid­ing trust, mer­ci­ful min­istry, un­fail­ing good­ness, for­giv­ing tol­er­ance, and en­dur­ing peace. If pro­fessed be­liev­ers bear not these fruits of the di­vine spirit in their lives, they are dead; the Spirit of Truth is not in them; they are use­less branches on the liv­ing vine, and they soon will be taken away. My Fa­ther re­quires of the chil­dren of faith that they bear much spirit fruit. If, there­fore, you are not fruit­ful, he will dig about your roots and cut away your un­fruit­ful branches. In­creas­ingly, must you yield the fruits of the spirit as you pro­gress heav­en­ward in the king­dom of God. You may en­ter the king­dom as a child, but the Fa­ther re­quires that you grow up, by grace, to the full stature of spir­i­tual adult­hood. And when you go abroad to tell all na­tions the good news of this gospel, I will go be­fore you, and my Spirit of Truth shall abide in your hearts. My peace I leave with you.”

• defined as › love, mercy, and truth – the desire to do will of God

196:3.32Some men’s lives are too great and no­ble to de­scend to the low level of be­ing merely suc­cess­ful. The an­i­mal must adapt it­self to the en­vi­ron­ment, but the re­li­gious man tran­scends his en­vi­ron­ment and in this way es­capes the lim­i­ta­tions of the pres­ent ma­te­rial world through this in­sight of di­vine love. This con­cept of love gen­er­ates in the soul of man that super­an­i­mal ef­fort to find truth, beauty, and good­ness; and when he does find them, he is glo­ri­fied in their em­brace; he is con­sumed with the de­sire to live them, to do righ­teous­ness.