12. We believe in the atonement that Jesus
re-established between God and man, and that through him we can regain our original estate
as Sons of God.
There are many people who
believe atonement requires that they beg God for forgiveness of sins or that they must
experience some form of punishment. To atone really means "to reconcile;
restore to harmony." We are not punished for making mistakes, but experience
the results of our mistakes. Mathematics does not punish us for making an error in
a calculation. However, if we do make an error we experience the results of that mistake
as long as we allow it to stand. Once we reconcile the figures, the mistake is corrected
and the results of the error cease to affect any future calculation. In the process of
correcting the mistake we do not have to beg or make any promises to the principles of
mathematics in order for the error to cease to affect us. We only have to change our
minds. In the condensed version of Jesus’ message, he told us, "The time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel."
(Mark 1:15) Why postpone our good any longer? It is available to us now if we will
re-think our relationship with God and believe the Truth Jesus taught and recorded in the
scriptures.
The Unity Correspondence
School Annotations clearly illuminate this section of the Statement of Faith. "The
original meaning of the verb ‘atone’ in English was to ‘make at one’
by reconciling differences between those who had been at variance. God is the principle of
good, good in its perfectness. Men in their primitive state of knowing have felt
themselves separated from goodness and peace by looking upon God as a ‘holy
Being’ and feeling their iniquity (inequality) in not being able to measure up to His
standard of holiness. Jesus of Nazareth taught at-one-ment…God and man as one is the
all important truth...Jesus, the man, taught the relationship of God and man as Father and
son…. He showed men their likeness to God...encouraged them to claim and prove this
oneness as He had done...instructed them how to put away all their limited beliefs in sin
and lack by denials and release the God nature through claiming their divinity, their
oneness. Jesus did not make the atonement for them...showed them how to re-establish the
ideal…to work out their own salvation." (Series 2, Lesson 4, Annotation 12)
How important is the simple
statement,"…we can regain our estate as Sons of God." It does not tell us
that we will once again become sons of God because we never cease to be God’s
children. We are like the prince raised by paupers who realized who he was and claimed his
inheritance as a royal child. Once we catch a glimmer of the Spirit within us, we no
longer accept the information gained through the senses as the Reality of our existence.
Nor do we attempt to manipulate things in the world. We recognize them for what they are,
effects which are the result of an invisible cause which is found in the formative power
of thought and feeling. None of us can inhibit or destroy the divine plan for we are not
the allness of God. But we do form and shape our own life experiences by our
consciousness.
13. We believe that the prayer of faith shall save the sick,
resurrect the body from "trespass and sins," and finally overcome the last
enemy, death.
James said, " . . . and
the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has
committed sins, he will be forgiven." (5:15) Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "The
last enemy to be destroyed is death." (1 Cor 15:26) These form the foundation for
this section of the Statement of Faith. "The prayer of faith is not supplication, a
begging God to give things to man. Prayer at its highest is the entry through faith into a
realm of mind forces that when rightly contacted change the character of every cell in
brain and body." (Dynamics for Living, p. 104) If Jesus and his disciples and
even the early Christians did miraculous things through their deep faith, we can all do
the same. Jesus told us that the things he did we could do and even greater things. Faith
is something we always have because it is one of the twelve divine faculties in man. It is
the power of the mind to perceive, the ability to see beyond appearances and lay hold of
the invisible reality which lies behind all human existence. Faith has an investment
quality. Since we always have faith, the question we need to ask ourselves at any moment
is, "Where is faith invested?" Is it in the presence or the absence of
God–in the presence of life and health, or in their absence which appears as disease
or death?
The prayer of faith is the
perception and affirmation of divine Reality. Affirm life and health within you until
every cell is spiritualized and electrified. Without ceasing or wavering, establish within
your consciousness Truth principles until limitation and error cannot stand in your
presence. Even the "last enemy" fades in the presence of such an enlightened
consciousness.
For so many generations man
has seen the horizon he called death and feared it as ultimate reality. Jesus lived to
show us that death as we have conceived it is not a reality. He willingly chose to walk
across that horizon and return, proving that the end we perceived and feared was only the
limitation of physical sight and spiritual understanding. We pair life and death as if
they were opposites but it is birth and death which are opposites. Birth is the movement
above the horizon like the sun’s rising while death is the forward, progressive
movement beyond the horizon of the setting sun. We all know without question that the sun
still shines and will be visible again in a brief time. The "last enemy" to
overcome is the fear of our misconception of death. What Jesus accomplished once can be
accomplished by anyone today whose faith is correctly invested.
"True prayer is
intercommunion with God; it is a common union of man’s consciousness and Divine Mind,
God.... In true prayer the consciousness of the individual is turned wholly to God, the
source of divine ideas of Absolute Good. When this is done, there is no room for any
limited concept to find entrance into his being." (Unity Correspondence School Course
Material Series 1, Lesson 1, Annotation 3)
14. We believe that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is alive and in
the world today. We believe that the "more abundant life," which Jesus promised,
is poured into the race stream as a vitalizing energy, and that, when accepted in faith,
it purifies the life-flow in our bodies, and makes us immune to all disease thoughts and
disease germs.
"‘But,’ you
say, ‘Jesus Christ is gone.’ I assure you that he has not gone. He is in our
midst today. He has been seen again and again standing on this platform, and we absolutely
know that he is in the fourth dimension, that he has a body." These were Charles
Fillmore’s words from our stage here on Tracy Avenue to visitors at the opening of
the Unity Conference and Healing Revival in 1923. Jesus, as our elder brother, took the
next step in his spiritual evolution to what Charles Fillmore called "the fourth
dimension." As a more fully developed soul, he has the ability to transcend what we
know as time and space to continue to be a beneficial presence in this world. I know that
Mr. Fillmore and others saw, and people continue to see, Jesus’ presence.
When Jesus said that he came
in order that we all might have a more abundant life, he was reminding us that, because he
demonstrated the presence of abundant supply, health, peace of mind and more, that same
abundance not only exists, but is available to us all. However, in order to experience
this abundance, we must accept it through a change in our thoughts and beliefs.
We originate from perfect
life, and because there is nothing in Divine Mind other than perfection in all things, our
heritage is health, wholeness here, now and forever. Disease cannot have any reality
because sick thinking, feeling, belief or conditions can be changed by a change in
consciousness. These can be changed because they are not God’s eternal creation but
man’s distorted temporal formation.
"Health, real health, is from within
and does not have to be manufactured in the without. It is the normal condition of man, a
condition true to the reality of his being." (Keep A True Lent, p. 173)
To be continued next month.
Copyright © 2000 by Greg W. Neteler
Used with permission.
Messages from previous months