The Christ Ideal · 5 of 9

The New Birth

In the foregoing chapters we have noted the importance of human cooperation in the realisation of the divine ideal. Man is divinely gifted from the outset, and the divine guidance is omnipresent. Yet our entire experience is given us as a free opportunity to learn the higher from the lower, to pursue self until, by sheer dissatisfaction, we learn the power and beauty of that higher will with which our own is thus put in striking contrast.

The greatest attainments therefore result from a certain degree of moral choice or spiritual willingness. Man must awaken to full self-consciousness, and become self-victorious before the highest ideal can be realised through him. He must atone for his wayward years by years of zeal for righteousness, and no vicarious suffering on the part of others can relieve him of that burden which his own hands have wrought. For no one can attain self-dominion for another, no outsider can turn the life-currents from lower to higher.

This statement is perfectly obvious. Yet it is necessary to affirm and reiterate it, so apt is man to shirk individual responsibility, so long a time is it ere he learns that the universe is begirt with unflinching laws.

Jesus again and again assures his hearers that there is no way of escape from individual responsibility. God is a God of justice, and each man must prove himself worthy before he shall receive the blessings of the spiritual Kingdom.

So much depends on the individual that even Jesus, with all his power, could not make way for James and John to sit on his right and left hand (Mark x., 40). “This is for those only for whom it hath been prepared,” that is, for those who because of their great work for the Christ earn the right to occupy a superior position, to make a greater sacrifice for the Father.

Again, Jesus declares of himself ( John v., 30), “I can of myself do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is righteous; because I seek not my own will, but the will of him that sent me.” That is, though so much depends upon the individual, yet the relation is reciprocal. When the individual at last blends his will with the divine, it is the power of God that accomplishes the greater work. The relationship is direct between God and man. No one can step in either to relieve man of the responsibility of choice, or to usurp the prerogative of God.

It is true, Jesus assures his followers that no one shall come to the Father except through the son, and those whom the son wills to reveal unto him. This seems to imply that the decisive power rests with Jesus. But we must first understand what is meant by “coming through the son.”

Jesus permits Peter to call him the Christ, which means literally “the anointed one.” The anointed one, or the Messiah, had long been expected as the deliverer who should set men free from the bondages of sin and death.

But this Messiah was expected to come as a king in great glory to establish a kingdom, and Jesus was very far from being the Messiah whom the Jews had expected. Jesus was a seer, a spiritual prophet, and the Christ ideal attained by him referred to the great environing Kingdom of God which Jesus preached.

As the Christ was an ideal which Jesus attained, a divine type in the universal spiritual Kingdom, Jesus was qualified to speak as the Christ. We must therefore distinguish his authoritative words as the great spiritual king from his personal life as a being of flesh and blood. Thus we shall avoid the mystical complications of the fourth gospel, and refrain from all confusion between the flesh and blood, on the one hand, and the spirit on the other.

“It is the Spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing.”

“But this spake he of the Spirit which they that believed on him were to receive.”

It would be a most ignoble rendering of Jesus’s teachings to identify the Christ with the physical being. Jesus distinctly tells us that “that which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” He assures us that every man must be born anew, that is, born from above.

“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” That is, there is a higher law even than the law of self-conscious responsibility. The utmost which the human will can do is to dedicate itself to the Spirit, to seek the Kingdom of God and be true to the divine prompting; it cannot dictate when the divine inspiration shall occur. Man’s highest statement simply is that at a time whose coming he knew not, while he was faithful but knew not that he was unusually receptive, the Spirit breathed upon him, quickening new life in him, inspiring new peace, and communicating a greater love. Yet even in the least of men, when this great receptivity is attained, the Christ is present, and no man cometh to the Father except through this sonship. There is no other way. There could be no other way. As well expect the heavens to fall as for man to receive the Holy Spirit in this its highest form until be attains the Christ attitude in some degree.

In order to understand the teaching of Jesus concerning salvation, we must then remember the law of the new birth, or the coming of the Holy Spirit upon all who in some measure live the life which Jesus lived.

We must spiritualise the entire doctrine: We must believe in and seek the “well of water springing up into eternal life” from within. We must live above the flesh in the consciousness of God’s presence, ever faithful to the highest we know. Then shall we begin to eat of that food of which the physical man knows nothing. Then shall we begin to drink of that water which really quenches the thirst of the soul.

But we must not lose sight of the fact that the beginning of the new birth is the discovery of our personal responsibility, is a change of attitude toward daily life.

“He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life.” Not he who closes the door, but he who enters the portal of the spiritual sanctuary.

Throughout Jesus’s ministry, stress is laid upon this law of individual responsibility. Again and again Jesus declares that action and reaction are equal. As a man judges, he shall be judged. As he measures so shall he be measured unto. “Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek and ye shall find; for every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” Therefore we should do unto others as we would that men should do unto us. For no man can escape the penalty of his actions, no man shall be set free until the last farthing is paid.

Here, again, the teaching of Jesus is as precise as mathematics. If you would alter the results produced upon you, you must first change your mode of life within. This law applies even to a man’s thoughts, for simply to look upon a person with sinful thoughts is sufficient to bring its punishment.

Even he who is angry with his brother, or he who cries, “Thou fool!” must suffer severely.

Nothing could be more explicit than this. Man is played upon by a stream of events or experiences which each soul meets in a certain way. The Father is present in all these experiences, all are meant for man’s good. But what man makes out of them depends upon himself, what he thinks, what motives and deeds he chooses. There is no kind but foolish friend to pay our fine for us and set us free. It is impossible, by imploring God, to reap as we have not sown. Heaven and earth could sooner pass away than this, for upon this law of action and reaction heaven and earth are founded.

Thus the discovery of the meaning of the fall of man is likewise the glad news that by the same law whereby we suffered and sinned we may build ourselves “new mansions in the skies,” we may regenerate all that is in us. There is indeed compensation for struggles which teach so great a truth as this.

Jesus therefore meets man where he is and points out the way of escape, by revealing that faith which is founded on law, the law of exact sowing and reaping. It rests with man to say whether he is ready, whether he cares the more for the fruits of the Spirit or for the possessions of the flesh.

A man may compromise with his conscience, if he will; but he will not find the Kingdom. He may simulate righteousness, but he will have a corresponding reward. But when, at last, he is intensely in earnest, when he gives all that he is and all that he has, then shall he really find the Kingdom, then shall he be born from above.

From the point of view of Jesus’s teaching there is therefore no reason to condemn the universe. The law is so plain that in the end even the fool cannot err therein.

Man alone is at fault. The wrong springs from within. All reform must accordingly begin within. Only when we have cast the beam out of our own eye can we see clearly how to cast it out of our brother’s eye.

Even sickness is identified with sin, which in the original meaning of the word translated sin in the New Testament signifies “to miss the mark.” It matters not to Jesus whether he says, “Thy sins are forgiven thee,” or “Arise, take up thy bed and walk.” For both are infractions of divine law. Over both the Christ has power, since the essence of the Christ life is to control all that lies below it, through the consecration “not my will, but thine be done.”

Here is the point where so many have failed in their attempts to understand the teaching of Jesus with reference to sin. It has been supposed that Jesus died to save us, as a propitiatory sacrifice—as if God were an angry king instead of a Father of love. Consequently, it has been deemed sufficient merely to believe on Jesus, as if he could somehow relieve man of all responsibility and the obvious necessity of changing his mode of life to conform to the Christ ideal.

It is the consecrated life of Jesus, his spiritual history, not his physical death, which shows what it means to accept the Christ. Jesus’s life was characterised above all by obedience to the divine law. That law, we have seen, applies to the body as well as to the soul. We may therefore conceive of Jesus as adjusting his life to the divine instinct in a thousand and one details. To seek the Father’s Kingdom and loyally realise the divine ideal of righteousness means just this many-sided adjustment, this detailed manifestation of harmony.

The Christ life is without sin, therefore, because in the universal, not merely in any particular sense, it was harmoniously adjusted to the law of God.

Since the Father’s will is immanent in all creation, to do his will one must obey it on all the planes of being. It is not enough to obey in thought alone. We must consecrate, therefore elevate and adjust, the entire life, mind, heart, body and soul. If we will do this all shall be taken care of, the health of the body as well as the health of the mind.

Thus the Christ law applies to the minutest detail. It is literally universal. It is that mode of thought and conduct which in every respect aims at and actually “hits the mark.”

The remedy for all sin is therefore to direct our energies with, not against, the omnipresent divine energy, ever welling up within. The Christ attitude is the attitude of perfect adjustment, the perfect blending of the human will with the divine.

When the heavens were opened unto Jesus, and he perceived the divine peace descending, his vision of the Christ ideal became perfectly clear, he understood the law in all its fulness. His life was wholly dedicated to the Father’s work, to the welfare of his fellow-men, that they, too, might be saved, not from a general hell, but from the hell each had created by his sin, or “fall,” the only way of escape from which was to seek the Kingdom of God in the Christ spirit.

But nowhere does Jesus speak of God as the angry deity of the Old Testament. That was the old idea, consonant with the acceptance of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Jesus came to declare a better way, the law of love, and with it he brought the conception of God as a watchful Father.

Every quality that makes the old deity repugnant was swept away. Every evidence is given that if we repent, that is, come to judgment and change our mode of thought and life so that we do the Father’s will, we shall enjoy the forgiveness, the remission of sins which is a natural consequence of righteousness.

How sublime the prospect, yet how stringent the law! Though a man accept a theological creed, make great protestations, and pray in a loud voice, it matters not. Jesus unsparingly condemned many customs which have obtained for ages in the Church. Here, as elsewhere, his statements are unqualified. For ever is it true that no man can serve two masters. No compromise is possible. A man must reap as he has sown, just as the number of units in a problem in arithmetic produces a given sum, and can produce no other sum unless more units be added.

But by the same law, the moment a man begins to sow righteously he shall reap righteousness. No man can sow for him, any more than a man may think for him. For, let it be repeated, it was not the death of Jesus which saved mankind; it was the life he lived, the Christ, the ideals to which he was faithful even when men came to slay him. “I am come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly.”

Therefore every man who would be free must deny himself, take up his life problem where it is, and follow where Jesus led, endeavour to live as Jesus lived.

It would be futile to imitate the external life of Jesus. We are not called upon to do precisely what Jesus did. We are called upon to meet the opportunities immediately before us as Jesus met the hardships of his life.

We cannot even save ourselves by repeating the words which Jesus uttered. Each must retire to his sanctuary and learn there how to be the Christ. For each must be a new Christ. And even greater works are promised when many shall attain the Christ attitude and lead the Christ life.

Jesus saved mankind, therefore, by revealing the true way. Before his time no one had been faithful in all respects to the divine will,—so far as history records,—though many had been faithful in certain details. But after his time no one could say that the way was not clear. Since then men have known not only the truth, but the way and the life.

Yet how far from Jesus’s meaning is that doctrine which lays chief emphasis upon salvation! The salvation theory is akin to the theosophical doctrine of “Karma.” The Theosophist labours to rid himself of the burdens of “Karma,” or the accumulated misdeeds of previous existences; he is ever seeking to avoid another incarnation. Thus all is primarily for self. Aud so the Christian has sought escape from the torments of hell. But imagine Jesus healing the sick, not because of compassion for them, but because he “needed” to in order to be saved, or to avoid re-embodiment!

“He that loveth his life shall lose it.”

In the doctrine of Jesus all lesser ends are fulfilled by the attainment of the highest. The true Christ man simply says, Come what may, death, crucifixion, another life, it will find me ready. “Not my will, but thine be done.” “He that loseth his life shall find it.”

Thus does Jesus trace all results back to the individual. It is not the storm which sweeps upon the house built on the sand that is to be condemned; the blame rests with him who chose the uncertain foundation. Every tree is known by its fruits, and the tree must be pure before it can produce pure fruit. There is no other way. Jesus does not resort to theoretical arguments, nor is he a believer in miracles, that is, infringements of law.

The universe was for Jesus a realm of law, and no compromise was possible. Therefore he always spoke unqualifiedly. Unless a man be willing to do the entire will of the Father, he cannot attain the Christ. Only through the sonship, only through the Christ can such things come as people have sought in their pursuit of the Messianic ideal.

Thus Jesus is the Saviour because be points out the way of escape from sin, from the consequences of misdirected life; Salvation can come only through this channel because man can only direct his energies aright when he is living the Christ life. It must come through conduct, for individual conduct is alone responsible for the results suffered.

Another may bear our burdens for us for a time. There is much vicarious suffering in the world. But sooner or later all men must face the great alternatives and decide for themselves. For no one can be unselfish for another. Each must settle this problem of problems in the solitude of his own heart: either self or the Christ. By the consecrated life which follows, the world shall know how the struggle ended. Not by protestations of belief do men prove themselves saved; not by publishing abroad the works of their right hands. Always it is the life, and the life is determined by the individual soul.

But are not people saved by the divine grace? the critic asks. Is not even the hardened sinner sometimes suddenly transformed?

What are we to understand by the divine grace—a miraculous interposition? If so, we must part company with Jesus, for Jesus assures us that, to the last, everything is governed by law.

But if by the divine grace is meant the new birth from above, the coming of the Holy Spirit to the receptive soul, the unexpected welling up of the divine life, we shall have the full sympathy of Jesus. This is not a providential interposition. It is the regular activity of God, the constant effort of the divine Father to recall the wayward son. At all times and in all places the Father thus seeks recognition. Nothing is more in accord with law than this.

What then constitutes the sudden change from the sinful to the righteous life? Is it God’s action alone? Then it would not be an act of free will.

The suddenness is unquestionably due to some change on man’s part, either to subconscious receptivity, or to self-disgust on account of a long career of sin. For in order to be a true conversion it must be a permanent change in consciousness, a recognition of the Christ ideal as contrasted with the life of sin. There must be preparation for it, a gradual working up to the point where, when the divine alternative was presented, it was at once accepted; for there are no sudden leaps in God’s cosmos, no changes contrary to the law of evolution.

But can there not be forgiveness of sins? What are we to understand by forgiveness?

Jesus says that we are forgiven as we forgive. He urges us to forgive that we may be forgiven. Thus he invariably assures men that the first change must take place in themselves.

Yet may not the Master bear our sins for us? Again, what is meant by bearing another’s sins? Are we absolved because we accept him, because he hung upon the cross? Are we therefore free from obligation?

No, Jesus does not teach this. He bids men take up the cross and follow him. If man must atone for his sinful life by following the Christ, by patiently working day by day to wear off the burdens of his earlier years, this process surely cannot be stopped by mentally casting the burden on someone else. That would imply that Jesus knew not what he said when he based the entire plan of salvation on the law of individual action and reaction.

No, there is no escape from this conclusion. In so far as a man repents and seeks the Kingdom of God, he wins freedom and peace. God is always faithful; Jesus has done his utmost to reveal the Christ law to all. But upon man, individual man, rests the responsibility.

The Father never fails to come and plead. The Christ spirit is abroad in all the world. All nature declares the law of salvation which Jesus so clearly enunciated. But God does not repent for man. Jesus does not come and compel obedience.

There are, no doubt, many marked and sudden changes from unrighteousness to righteousness. But if we could know all the circumstances we should find the same familiar evolutionary conditions everywhere exemplified.

In the end, therefore, we can give no wiser counsel than the advice of Jesus, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness,” for with each step in the seeking we set that power in motion which in due course will free us from our sins. And when the unexpected happens, we may know that it is not because the Father has made special effort to save us, but that in deepest truth he is perpetually seeking to make himself known to all men.

The new birth is thus the supreme work of creation; the coming down from above of that supernal peace which soothes the troubled soul after its long travail; the union of the creative spirit with the noblest product of the life which has evolved from below. In that moment the son at last recognises the Father. In that moment the true atonement is made. For all barriers have fallen away. The law of life is seen. The mission of Jesus is appreciated. And the love of the Christ begins its perfect work.

To become a Christian therefore means to pray without ceasing, to live hour by hour and moment by moment as Jesus would have men live. It is as impossible to settle the matter once for all by standing up and confessing one’s self a Christian, as it is to do all our praying for the week in a halfhour on Sunday. It is the little causes that are effective, the little thoughts of righteousness and the little deeds of love. And so the new birth extends through the Christian’s lifetime. He must die daily and every day be resurrected until, finally, only righteousness shall triumph, only love shall prevail.