IV. THE GOLDEN KEY
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IF WE realize that Jehovah and Jesus are identical, do we not have a golden key to unlock the Word? Its difficulties and apparent contradictions then disappear. Indeed, in no other way can we understand the Scriptures. Without this understanding we are perplexed, for we seem to see two separate identities as God, which makes two Gods—an obvious impossibility. With this new idea in our minds there is no confusion of thought.
Let us apply this golden key to the familiar fourteenth chapter of John. I contend that, if we do not look upon the Father and the Son as one, as soul and body are one, it has no meaning, but if we do so interpret it, or indeed any other part of the New Testament, we shall find no difiiculties whatever.
We recall its reassuring opening, one that has given untold comfort to the followers of Jesus in every age:
"Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me." Is not this an invitation to think of him as their idea of God? Else why the connection? "In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also."
Of course, no mere man who ever lived could have spoken these words acceptably; we receive them as we do because we know that Jesus spoke them—he who was one with the Fathter as body and soul an one.
How beautifully this is shown in this:
"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."
As no man can approach another's soul except through his body,—that is, through his outward expression in time and space,—so can no one approach the Divine soul—the Father—except through the outward expression of it in Jesus. As we know one another only through these outward expressions of our interior selves, so we can know the Father—the unseen, invisible God—only through His manifestation in Christ. Yet these two separate manifestations of body and soul are not separated in fact, only in appearance; they act as one, and are one, as our bodies and souls are one being.
Jesus sometimes spoke as if he had a consciousness perfectly at one with the Father, and then again entirely distinct from that of the Father; but we can understand how that is because we have an interior consciousness into which we come and from which we speak; and then again we are immersed, as it were, in the things of sense,—of the outward world,—and we feel our separateness from the things of the spirit. This interior consciousness becomes more and more clear in our own case as the interior life is more clearly developed and we act more definitely from it. It is obscured as we give way to the darkening processes of sin. We all have this duality of consciousness, or consciousness according to our state as if on two different planes of being. We can become a Mr. Hyde or a Dr. Jekyll, according as we develop our lives, and we are as distinctly on one plane or the other in consciousness as the character in Robert Louis Stevenson's book. This enables us to understand Jesus, for he also had it as long as he was limited by the body and life assumed from Mary.
Jesus was an expression in time and space of a soul, similar to our own expression. The processes of his purely human life must have been similar to our own. In the fourteenth chapter of John he appears to be in the interior consciousness, where he perceives his identity with the Father. This is shown by what follows:
"If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him and have seen him."
This was a most remarkable statement, but it fell on uncomprehending minds.
"Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us."
Are we not always looking for some expression of the Father apart from the Son, and do we not also have our answer in what follows?
"Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?"
From these statements can any of us ever expect to see God in any other shape or form than that of Jesus? Jesus is God made manifest to men. "In him," as Paul says, "dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." There is no other God apart from him. The Father is the indwelling Divine—the soul; the Son is His expression—His projection—in time and space. The Father and the Son are one, as soul and body are one. Jesus illustrates this in his endeavor to make his disciples more fully comprehend him:
"Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?"
Was he not saying that his soul was the Divine Father, acting as one with its concrete expression in time and space?
"The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works."
Could we express the interaction between our souls and bodies more perfectly? Do not our words and deeds come from our souls acting through our bodies?
Let us consider these words:
"If ye shall ask anything in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son."
What does this mean? Is it not this: If ye shall ask anything according to the quality of the life which I have manifested before you, for a name expresses or connotes the quality of one's life; thus, If ye shall ask anything according to the spirit which has actuated me, that will I do,—not the Father,—that the Father may be glorified, that is, may be "honored, ascribed glory to, exalted, adored, worshipped," in the Son. The Standard Dictionary gives us this as the definition of "glorify." We claim that we are to recognize the Father in the Son, and to honor, adore, and worship him in the Son. Is not Jesus evidently trying to give his disciples to understand that their prayers will be answered by himself directly, and hoping from this that they will perceive that He and the Father are one identical being?
Now here follow some statements which are in the sense of the letter extremely confusing if we think of God as existing in three beings or as three beings, and yet which appear to convey that idea:
"If ye love me, keep my commandments, and I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever."
Here are the three "Persons" of the Athanasian creed. Jesus appears to be subordinate because he prays to the Father, and the Comforter appears to be subordinate because he obeys the mandate of the Father. But let us note that it is the Comforter, or the Holy Spirit, who is to be sent. Immediately he tells us,
"I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you."
In other words, he at once identifies himself with this Comforter. He confirms this a little later by saying,
"He that loveth me, shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him."
But he modifies this by saying,
"If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him."
First, it was the Holy Spirit who was to be sent; then it was Jesus who was to come and comfort his disciples; then both the Father and the Son are to come. Then he caps the climax by saying,
"But the Comforter, which is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name."
Now these varying passages must mean that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are simply different offiices, functions, phases, manifestations, of the One Divine Being, and not three distinct beings or persons. Any other conclusion leads to an absurdity.
Proceeding upon this assumption, the whole matter is at once cleared up. Jesus has already told them that if they prayed to him he would himself answer their prayers. And later he says, "And I say not unto you that I will pray the Father for you." In these cases he is speaking plainly and openly. When he says that he will pray the Father for them, is he not speaking according to the appearance in order that they may not cease to have the idea of the Divine back of him?
He is trying to tell them plainly that he is the Father. He has already told them so directly: but they cannot comprehend it. He keeps on trying to reveal himself as the Father; but still they cannot comprehend. He tells them that he will pray to the Father to send the Holy Spirit, but then shows that He is the Holy Spirit as well as the Father and the Son. In other words, he has shown them that these three manifestations of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—are all in him as soul, body, and proceeding life.
That the Holy Spirit is not a distinct person, but an influence or effluence, or proceeding, from him, is shown by the fact that after his resurrection he appeared to his disciples and breathed on them, saying, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit." A person cannot be breathed out from another person. The Greek Word for spirit, "pneuma," means "a current of air," "a breath." It expresses on the natural plane its counterpart on the spiritual plane, namely, the Divine breathing or the Divine proceeding.
Why did not Jesus state all these things plainly in the letter? We answer that he did, but that his disciples simply could not comprehend what he was trying to tell them. He at last gave up trying to tell them. He said,
"I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now."
He recognized, after much experiment, their state to be such that they could not then understand him. It was far more hopeless than to try to enable them to comprehend at that time the truth of and the laws governing the solar system. He could do no more than state the facts as plainly as he could, leaving the words with them for future ages to understand, at the same time trying to impress upon them, in whatever way was possible, that he was somehow God. He recognizes that a time will come when men will be able to understand, for after many humanly disheartening attempts to enlighten them he says:
"These things have I spoken unto you in parables; but the time cometh when I shall no more speak unto you in parables; but I shall show you plainly of the Father." (John 16:25.)
Has that time not now come?
In Revelation it is predicted, "Behold, he cometh with clouds."
Has the trouble with the Church of the past not been that it has seen him only obscurely in the clouds of the letter? It has failed to see him coming "with power and great glory" in these very clouds of the letter as he predicted in Matthew would be the way in which he would come again. We must remember that it was the glorified Jesus, after his ascension or perfect union with the Father, when there was no longer any apparent separation of identity, who said, "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty." He was plainly stating that he was all of God, the only God of heaven and earth.
If we shall from henceforth see in him "all the fulness of the Godhead bodily"; if we shall approach him alone as the God of heaven and earth, as he told us we must do,—"no man cometh unto the Father but by me,"—our theology will be wonderfully simplified and the Bible will become easy to understand in its claims concerning the Messiah and concerning Jesus as the fulfilment of these claims. The power that inheres in Christianity results from the acknowledgment of Jesus as God, and it is the unequivocal teaching of the Bible, as we have seen, that he is God.