[*]Jesus who is Perfect Everything is best understood as the Perfect Lover and Perfect Love, giving and enabling and commanding Perfect Love for one another and also for our enemies.
Since whatever He gives He is, He could not be Perfect Love unless always giving perfect Love and only perfect Love to everyone. So His commandment to love our enemies as well as to love one another is the prefect necessity of His Perfect Being. For Him to give less than perfect Love would make Him less than perfect Love. He, like us and we like Him, are what we give.
When we see this we will choose to give what we would like to be. Since we receive good measure pressed down and running over whatever we give, the only possible way to get what we desire is to give it.
Jesus gave good and only good and was therefore all good. He gave love and only love and was all love. He gave light and only light and was all light. He gave only health and healing and was all health and healing,
We will be what we want to be when we receive from Him what He is and give what we receive and give only what we receive. The Golden Rule is a revelation how to be what you want to be—by giving what you want to be and only what you want to be. It could not be otherwise. We could never be educated to co-work with Him for Perfect Everything for ourselves without also choosing, praying and working for Perfect Everything for all.
The divine Law of becoming perfect Personality and of making all things perfect is just as perfect as God Himself. The only possible way for God to be God (Love) and remain God (Love) is for Him to Love us and love the universe into loving. The only possible way to respond to His love is to love.
Everything would collapse on any other basis. On this basis the victory of love over hate, of good over evil, of life over death, of peace over war, and of Jesus Christ over the anti-Christ is sure and certain.
It is only a question how long and how much further experimenting is required on our part to induce us to join Him in giving pure good to all.
Since the means appear in the end and are part of the end, the only possible way to bring the kingdom of heaven is to give heaven and only heaven. As long as we give any hell we will be in the hell we give.
If we are sensible enough to receive Jesus Christ and His Perfect Love and to give Him and His love, and only Him and His Love, the kingdom of heaven will come to us in a day. If the entire world would do this the kingdom would come to the world in a day.
Perfect Love, because it wills and works no evil to anyone, but all possible good to everyone, is the fulfillment of the Law and the very essence of the Gospel.
Love is highest impersonal Good and works with such intelligence, wisdom, and grace that from its very impersonality it takes in personality. Highest impersonal love ultimately appears before us as Personality of all. Katherine of Genoa said, “Love is God.” John says, and we know this is true, “God is love” and “love is of God.” As Tolstoy put it, “Where love is there God is also.” Mrs. Grace Munsey, to whom I dictated much of the first draft of Manifest Victory, said, “Everything done in love is done by God Himself.”
When you follow love, the kind of love St. Paul writes of so well in the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians, you are really following God whether you are aware of it at the time or not.
Love best defines God, and Jesus Christ best defines love. He defines Perfect Love by being Perfect Love.
All and more that is said of love by St. Paul, St. John, St. Peter, and the love poets is true and more than true of Jesus Christ. Jesus suffered long and was kind. As Kagawa put it, “He went” (and we might add is always going) “to the uttermost limits and possibilities of love in our behalf and behalf of all.” Jesus bore all things, suffered all things, endured all things. He was always humble, He was always rejoicing. Facing the crucifixion, He kept His joy and peace and willed both to His disciples. He never failed or fails anyone. He not only fulfills the Law but brings everything to perfect attainment and to perfect union.
When everything else fails, Jesus and His love have their best opportunity to succeed.
If there seems to be failure in terms of your present degree of union with Him and of love, increase the union and increase the love. If the small doses that you have been giving have not brought the triumph, increase the dose and keep on increasing until love triumphs.
As a Methodist minister in the tobacco growing section of North Carolina put it, “You know if one of these tobacco barns were on fire a few buckets of water would not extinguish the fire but would help some. You also know that enough water would put the fire out. Likewise we know a little love will not put out a world on fire with hate and fear, but even a little helps. We do know enough love would put out these fires.” Enough love, as Emerson put it, “Will make a paradise of this old earth of ours.”
If we go with Jesus, enter into ineffable union with Him and join Him in giving His perfect love and light and healing to all, we will enter into perfect marriage with Him and become loving as He is loving, healing as He is healing. Everything of His will be OUTS.
How to increase in union and in love:
1. Open wide to receive Jesus and His love. Jesus and love are longing and knocking to come in. Ask forgiveness for having kept them out. When you really want Jesus and love to come in and take entire charge you are wanting precisely what He and love are longing to do. As the colored brother put it, “Election is this way; Jesus is all the time voting for us and the devil is all the time voting against us and the way we vote carries the election.” Jesus and love are all the time seeking to come in. When we choose with Jesus and love we are filled with Him and His love.
2. Choose to give Him and His love to all. As blessed as it is to receive Him and His love, it is still better to give Him and His love. Indeed, you have to give in order to continue to receive. Receiving more than you choose to give makes you like a swamp and swamps do not need more water; they need ditching and draining. The Heavenly love is never like stagnant water; but is always like a springing fountain and a flowing river. An infinity of love is ready to flow out through us. We do not have to furnish the love, we only have to choose for it to outflow. The new commandment to love as we are loved is not so difficult as the old commandment to love God with all of our being and to love our neighbor as ourselves. According to the Law we have to do all the loving: through union with Jesus, the love is given and we only have to pass it on. And by passing it on we become love itself.
3. Pray for Perfect Love. This prayer is so much in the will of God it is always heard and answered. You can have all the love you want is you want it enough to ask for it and to give it.
4. Do your part in removing the hindrances of love. Wherever you have been unloving acknowledge it and ask forgiveness, ask not only the Lord’s forgiveness, but also ask the forgiveness of those to whom you have been unloving This brings flood tides of love. If anyone has anything against you go to him in love and seek to remove the hindrances or the stumbling blocks. Love requires that we get everything we can out of the way, that we make it as easy as possible for people to love, and all nigh impossible for them not to love.
5. In every new situation pray to see and to choose the most loving thing. Where evil has come to you choose to meet it with good. If you have been dealt with unlovingly choose to react especially lovingly. When we choose to love and to give His love, His love flows in and enables us to love.
6. In every situation remember what Jesus did in situations far more difficult. Also remember His teaching, if you are to be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect you will have to be loving and merciful as He is loving and merciful. Remember what Jesus did and let Him teach you what to do in every situation and you cannot escape being loving.
No matter what evil you have suffered, real or imaginary, sooner or later you are going to forgive it and you will not be happy until you do. Why delay the happiness? Happy is the man who can forgive quickly. Do not let the sun go down on your foolishness. Our joy and power to help people depends on entering into a union with Jesus and perpetually out-flowing in His love, light, and healing.
Footnotes / Endnotes:
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- * [Note, footnote is on the Subtitle word Love*.] See Manifest Victory, pp. 149-157,180-198 and 252-255. (↩)