The Christ Ideal

In the foregoing chapters we have noted the importance of human co- operation 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.

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.”

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.