I awakened this morning to words of freedom. I understood that to live in the kingdom of heaven we have to be free ourselves and set everyone else free. That is the love that never fails 1Corinthians 13:8. As long as there is condemnation for myself or for another, I am not free and I cannot love.
John 3:17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
Romans 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
When I have a list of rules for myself or for another, I am under the law
and cannot love because I am always judging and condemning.
I was experiencing symptoms of a head cold and was debating whether or not I should take some medicine my sister had given me. Then it hit me. To even have that debate meant that I was in bondage and putting everyone else in that same bondage. I realized that it is not about taking medicine or not taking medicine, going to the doctor or not. It is about the love that never fails, the love that says that I and everyone else have the freedom to do whatever we feel to do and experience no condemnation from ourselves or from another.
If God is everywhere present and all powerful (omnipresent and omnipotent), then everything is good and has power only to do good if we can but recognize it. It is we who empower this good to appear as evil by believing in two powers—the power of the all-good God and a power opposed to God that can harm us. Jesus said:
Luke 10:19 Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.
There is no enemy
except our belief that there is, and nothing can hurt us because there is nothing to hurt us except our belief that there is.
Our belief in God (good) enables us to experience God (good) while our belief in evil (a power opposed to God) insures our experience of evil—even though there is no evil present in reality.
It is what I BELIEVE, not what I DO, that determines my experience of good or evil.
Proverbs 23:7 For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.
If I believe that there is only one power (God) and that it is good, then NOTHING
can by any means hurt me. But it can hurt the ones who believe in two powers:
Psalms 91:7-8 A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.
We have thought that the wicked
are those not doing the right thing. No, they are those who, like the man with the one talent that Jesus labeled wicked,
are afraid of God (as were Adam and Eve) because of their feelings of separation, those not knowing that their righteousness is a free gift (see The Parable of the Right Hand and Arm of God). They are those who believe in two powers.
It is this belief in evil as a power apart from God (eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil) that brought in the law, the list of do’s and don’t’s we think we must obey to be loved, accepted and blessed by God (see One with God).
When my focus is on doing
what is right
and not doing what is wrong, I must of necessity become a judge of what is right and wrong and a condemner of myself and others for not keeping the rules that I’ve made. I will begin labeling those who observe my rules as righteous
and those who don’t as wicked.
We all loudly protest that we don’t disobey Jesus’ command to judge not,
but if we listen to the words coming out of our mouths, we find that we spend a large percentage of our time judging (and condemning) both ourselves and others. Even when we don’t speak it out, we are thinking it in our hearts—I or someone else should or should not do this or that. We prophesy evil for ourselves and others who dare do this or don’t do that. Always in our minds, and way too many times with our mouth, we pronounce judgment. Seldom do we follow Jesus’ example and utter the prayer, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do
Luke 23:34. We haven’t yet REALLY heard the words of Jesus:
Matthew 5:44-45 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
We see from the verse quoted above as well as in the story of the prodigal son and his elder brother (and the story of the woman caught in adultery) that God makes no distinction between what we consider good
and evil
because He doesn’t even see evil:
Habakkuk 1:13 Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity:
He doesn’t see it because it is not there to see. There is only a belief in it that causes it to appear. However, Jesus warned us not to judge by the appearance, but rather to judge righteous judgment John 7:24. Evil is not in the consciousness of God. It is only in the human consciousness which thinks it is separated from God and must follow some law to end that separation.
If and when I ever begin operating out of the mind of Christ that I already have (but don’t know that I have), I too will cease to behold,
judge and condemn evil. I will be able to follow Jesus’ command to love, bless and do good. I will be able to look beyond the human consciousness in both myself and others to see the Christ within who is living the life of every man. I will know that the works of the flesh
(in myself or others) that I am observing are only the result of the lack of knowledge of our true identity—which is the word made flesh
(see Flesh).