The Gospel for Europe and elsewhere
Jesus is the Origin and Continuing Inspiration of the Gospel Movement
Blue Club European Urantia Conference, September 17, 2016
Who is Jesus? Our father-brother-friend. He invites us to follow him. If we do, we become part of his gospel movement. Increasingly we become his many-sided gospel of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and we proclaim these truths in thought, word, and deed in ways that fit the capacity of receptivity of the persons we communicate with. Jesus’ gospel is the secret of the solution to our personal problems and to the problems of our world.
John asked Jesus, “Master, what is the kingdom of heaven?” And Jesus answered: “The kingdom of heaven consists in these three essentials: first, recognition of the fact of the sovereignty of God; second, belief in the truth of sonship with God; and third, faith in the effectiveness of the supreme human desire to do the will of God — to be like God. And this is the good news of the gospel: that by faith every mortal may have all these essentials of salvation.”
An in-depth study of Jesus’ gospel discloses many facets of who Jesus is.
To stimulate our recognition of the fact of the sovereignty of God, we can activate our relationship with our beloved Universal Father. We know himpersonally; and our personal knowing encompasses our intellectual knowing of him as creator, controller, and infinite upholder. When we behold the distressing phenomena of the present age, which may seem out of control, we may lose sight of the sovereignty of God and need to be reminded of the cosmological dimension of the gospel. Jesus taught the Syrophoenicians 156:2.4 (1736.1) “about the uniformity of the laws of this world and the entire universe. They grasped the teaching that God is no respecter of persons, races, or nations; that there is no favoritism with the Universal Father; that the universe is wholly and ever law-abiding and unfailingly dependable” [156:2.4/1736.1] The Creator has established laws of matter, mind, and spirit; and according to the laws inherent in our creature freedom, each of our acts has a center of gravity which is either material or spiritual. Acts of evil and sin are material actions, and they have material consequences. Spiritual actions have spiritual rewards: “No act of good is ever wholly lost; it may be long thwarted but never wholly annulled, and it is eternally potent in proportion to the divinity of its motivation.” [48:6.7/552.5] This cosmic perspective helps us understand the present age. We read:
The confusion and turmoil of Urantia do not signify that the Paradise Rulers lack either interest or ability to manage affairs differently. The Creators are possessed of full power to make Urantia a veritable paradise, but such an Eden would not contribute to the development of those strong, noble, and experienced characters which the Gods are so surely forging out on your world between the anvils of necessity and the hammers of anguish. Your anxieties and sorrows, your trials and disappointments, are just as much a part of the divine plan on your sphere as are the exquisite perfection and infinite adaptation of all things to their supreme purpose on the worlds of the central and perfect universe.
Who is Jesus? Our local universe sovereign. Now let me ask you a question. How many of you recognize the fact of the sovereignty of God? May I see a show of hands? If anyone has doubts, I invite you to speak with me later.
The next gospel essential is belief in the truth of sonship with God. It is one thing to believe in the fact of sonship, another thing to realize its truth. Truth is a supreme value, discerned by the soul. And God is the life of truth. Cosmology is fact; relationship is value.
The concept of sonship with God has a three-fold scope: it includes the individual hearer, the family of faith, and the all-inclusive brotherhood of man.
Jesus linked the fact of the sovereignty of God as controller and ruler with the truth of the brotherhood of man. He said:
I declare to you that my Father in Paradise does rule a universe of universes by the compelling power of his love. Love is the greatest of all spirit realities. Truth is a liberating revelation, but love is the supreme relationship. And no matter what blunders your fellow men make in their world management of today, in an age to come the gospel which I declare to you will rule this very world. The ultimate goal of human progress is the reverent recognition of the fatherhood of God and the loving materialization of the brotherhood of man.
Who is Jesus? The Creator Son who reveals our sonship with God. You are divinely created, infinitely loved, spiritually indwelt, evolutionary, free-will, sons and daughters of God! Do you believe this truth? If anyone has doubts, I invite you to speak with Jesus later.
Faith in the truth of sonship with God leads to the supreme joy of sonship with God, which, in turn, leads to the supreme desire to do the will of God.
The third gospel essential is faith in the effectiveness of the supreme human desire to do the will of God— to be like God.
If our desire for the Father’s will is not supreme, then we have to fix that. We have to make that desire supreme by revising or letting go of conflicting desires. In the final analysis, it is God who establishes the supremacy of our desire for the Father’s will, by his gift of righteousness which we receive by faith.
One thing that we know about the will of God is that our Father wants us to be like him. We walk the long path of becoming like God by experiencing the short path of being like God, the essential which we receive by faith. We become like God by being like him at the level possible for us at each stage of our growth.
Jesus traversed the path of growing up to become like God; and he has shown us how to do likewise. We can grow up with Jesus if we engage in the experiential study of Papers 123–29, which span his development from early childhood through later adult life. As we study these Papers closely, we discern qualities in Jesus that we need in order to develop a strong, balanced, and unified personality like his. We observe the activities that Jesus engaged in as he acquired these qualities, and we create projects for ourselves that involve similar activities.
For example: you are reading about Jesus’ early childhood and you are impressed by the sentence which tells of his first personal and wholehearted moral decision. You stop and ponder. You ask yourself, “What is the quality of my moral decisions? Do they have that personal and wholehearted quality, or are they a joyless, intellectual determination to do the right thing? Then you launch a project and begin to upgrade old decisions and make new ones. With each excellent moral decision, you bring together your understanding of the meaning of the facts of the situation and the meaning of the relevant spiritual value.
Another example: we see Jesus becoming a master teacher by going through every stage of human development, and by staying involved with people of all ages. He loved getting to know people, which enabled him naturally and spontaneously to reveal the Father according to the capacity of receptivity of each group of his hearers. He did not present advanced truth when he preached in public. He told the twelve, “Do not undertake to show men the beauties of the temple until you have first taken them into the temple.” If we follow this teaching, we will not publicize The Urantia Book as though it were part of the gospel.
Experiential study is demanding. If we are too busy to grow, we will not make time to grow up with Jesus. But if we do make time, the divine harvest is certain. Who is Jesus? The master teacher who leads us in experiential study.
Jesus gave one of his greatest teachings about being and becoming like God in the context of a powerful address, in which he explained how the apostles could get people to seek after them instead of their having to go with their message to the people. Jesus’ recipe is surprising. This is what he said—almost.
Consider the secularists, who have a science without religion, while one-sidedly spiritual enthusiasts have a religion without science. And when men become thus misled into accepting a narrow and confused disintegration of truth, their only hope of salvation is to become truth-co-ordinated — converted.
Let me emphatically state this eternal truth: If you, by truth co-ordination, learn to exemplify in your lives this beautiful wholeness of righteousness, your fellow men will then seek after you that they may gain what you have so acquired.”
In other words we can learn to integrate scientific living and spiritual living. But to do that takes wisdom, so we need to bring together the truths of science, philosophy, and spiritual experience. The philosophy of living outlined at the end of Paper 2 includes truth-coordinated living and its extension into the realms of beauty and goodness.
Who is Jesus? The one who reveals the way to live the will of God and enables us to be like God by giving us the gift of righteousness through the open door of faith. For the next question, I do not ask for a show of hands, only a show of hearts: Do you have faith in the effectiveness of the supreme desire to do the will of God—to be like God? I thank you for your honesty, and I thank God for your living and growing faith.
Jesus’ conclusion to this lesson on gospel essentials refers to them as essentials of salvation. What does salvation mean? Here are three phases that we can experience in this life:
1. Salvation from material fetters in the personal realization of sonship with God, who is spirit.
2. Salvation from intellectual bondage: man shall know the truth, and the truth shall set him free.
3. Salvation from spiritual blindness, the human realization of the fraternity of mortal beings . . . ; the service-discovery of spiritual reality and the ministry-revelation of the goodness of spirit values. [101:6.9-11/1112.5-7]
Our study of gospel essentials has now brought us to the place where we are prepared to update the expression of Jesus’ message to address the spiritual difficulties of our times. Europe and other continents today face overlapping sets of spiritual difficulties, including anti-religious secularism; nations struggling with problems of immigration, ecological and economic difficulties, and ethnic nationalisms; a wave of extremist violence; and the need for religious communities to promote intelligent worship, moral vigor, and cosmic wisdom. Countless people are angry, lost, and fearful; they see things getting worse, and they feel overwhelmed.
But directly or indirectly, Jesus’ many-sided gospel speaks to the heart of all such problems. I quote:
Personal, spiritual religious experience is an efficient solvent for most mortal difficulties; it is an effective sorter, evaluator, and adjuster of all human problems. Religion does not remove or destroy human troubles, but it does dissolve, absorb, illuminate, and transcend them.
The essentials that we have studied convey tremendous confidence that sooner or later we will, as the family of God, realize a wonderful future. Jesus’ original concept of the kingdom included future phases, and today we need a fresh restatement of his vision. Sooner or later, this planet will experience a spiritual renaissance.
Jesus combined sober factual realism with spiritual joy. He warned of “the enmity of the world,” even as he embraced the all-powerful truth of the friendly universe. He warned his apostles not to cast their pearls before swine, even as he ordained them to go forth to the world with a message of love and mercy. In Jesus, we can do what is otherwise humanly impossible. Whatever happens, we know that he is working out a special plan for this world, building a new civilization on his teachings [154:4.L/1720.3].
Who is Jesus? The Lord of history. His gospel has the power to transform individuals, groups, communities, nations, continents, and our entire world. In Jesus’ gospel “resides the mighty Spirit of Truth,” just like Jesus except for his body.
Jesus calls every one of us to get actively involved in the gospel movement. And “halfhearted, partial devotion will be unavailing.” This is the hour when we are called to the kingdom. Let us rise in faith and joy, patience and wisdom, love and mercy.
For the last time, I ask: Who is Jesus? He is the one who does not make himself the center of the gospel. “All Urantia is waiting for” . . . not the gospel about Jesus, nor The Urantia Book . . . , but the gospel of Jesus in its “living spiritual reality” [94:12.7/1041.5].
If you want more help from me on these topics, my new book, Living in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, shows how to coordinate scientific living and spiritual living so that you can acquire the beautiful wholeness of righteousness. Beginning Saturday, September 24, I am teaching a course on scientific living at Urantia University Institute (http://www.urantiauniversity.org/), and you can still sign up through next Wednesday. Earlier this year, I taught an experiential study group on growing up with Jesus; Antonio Schefer can give you access to the video tapes, and if you want to see them, contact him at conference@Triniteit.org. I also have a website for the gospel, http://UniversalFamily.org, and a site explicitly based on The Urantia Book: https://sites.google.com/site/ubquestionsandstudies. You can write to me at jwattles@kent.edu.