The Testimony of Love

 

 

by Christopher J. Patton

God is love. Love is caring about others known and unknown. It is sacrificing for the spiritual growth and mortal well-being of another often, like breathing, with a willingness and practice that includes all mankind.

Love is, therefore, not something that I am or can honestly say I perform or practice because the spiritual growth or mortal well-being of another is not something that I can define for another, or if I am honest, even for myself. Consequently, I am not love because I can’t define love. God does that. Only God, because He is love.

If I cannot define love, you can’t either, and that means that neither one of us is God. Nor can we discover God somewhere within our true or deep selves. Nor can we evolve toward love, because love is perfect, being eternally thus. Man is not eternal internally (spiritually) or externally (bodily), or we would already be perfection in practice. We cannot be a perfection seeking release from captive false consciousness because perfection is not possible to contain. Its omnipotence is liberty in its existence, released by its being.

So, men and women possess imperfect mortal spirituality that seeks eternity in the perfection of liberating love as defined externally from us in God. Thus, God must be revealed outside of self, or the god discovered is false, transitory, and un-love. In fact, it means the only way to liver eternally is in love, and the only way to be love is to become as God, which is impossible for any man or woman to achieve on his or her own. We have not the nature or the power. We have not the choice unless God provides it by grace in the expression of His own perfect will in love.

This impossibility demands the perfect sacrifice form perfect love so that mankind may grow spiritually and enjoy mortal well-being in the meantime. This sacrifice can only come from eternal love lived perfectly so we must look for God who lives a life of perfect love, demonstrating omnipotence and selfless grace in consideration of others, yet mortal so as to be capable of experiencing sacrificial death. This mortal person needs to live, or have lived, in perfect conformity to an external definition of truth and love that pre-dated His or Her inheritance of mortality or appearance in human flesh. That appearance must occur on the planet in our own dimension and mortal condition of physical life in order for the sacrifice to be efficacious in its genuine nature. The sacrifice must be chosen by love willingly and not forced, and its efficacy must be demonstrated by the spiritual transformation and mortal blessings in the lives of those who accept it.

Finally, the sacrifice in death must not be permanent, or it was not eternal and omnipotent love that was sacrificed. Therefore, we look for a testimony of a life liberated from death by cruel sacrifice, which also enlivens others with a promise of eternity evidenced in the lives of love lived as defined by God’s eternal standard of who love is as revealed by nature and practice, the personification of justice and truth, mercy and forgiveness, power and respect for the freedoms of another.

Only Jesus (Yeshua) of Nazareth fulfills the personified definition of love, being the God of Israel revealed as a Son, born of a Spirit transcendent, and present in all who accept His sacrifice.

Since Jesus, became a son, being born of the Spirit, men and women who receive this same Spirit become sons of the God of Israel, too, taking on His divine nature externally defined in the revealed Word, the Bible. The only way to receive this Spirit is through participatory acceptance of His sacrifice, and the only way to signify participatory sacrifice is to believe in its promise by dying to one’s self will in all things. Man dies to self by rejecting his or her own definition of love and ay accepting God’s definition as revealed in the Bible and experienced in His Spirit.

This choice trusts the Spirit to empower a transformation in one’s thoughts and behavior. It’s a transformation that grows in one’s thoughts and behavior. It’s a transformation that grows over time because one’s repentant choice is imperfect as long as mortality is one’s state of being. This is because we still retain the mortal nature and the mortal breath of life, which possesses an undivided nature of good and evil.

 
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