By Grace And The Law
Martin Cecil April 11, 1971
The world of Christianity has acknowledged that the One who was called Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Why was it that He could be called the Son of God? Simply because He revealed the Father on earth. He revealed the true nature and character of God on earth. He revealed the reality of Being on earth.
In the Garden, after He came forth from the tomb, He was speaking to Mary Magdalene and He told her to take a message to the disciples. This message is recorded in the Gospel according to John through these words: “I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.” It is obvious, then, that He made no distinction in this regard between Himself and those to whom the message was to be given. He provided the words of what we have come to call the Lord's Prayer, which begins “Our Father.” It is clear, then, that the potential of a son or a daughter of God is present in everyone. In His life on earth He revealed the truth of Being and is recognized as a Son of God, a Son of God revealing the truth of Being on earth. In effect He extended the invitation to all people to share in the revelation of this truth, for if His Father is our Father, then the whole body of mankind may share in revealing the Son of God on earth; in fact the revelation of the Son of God on earth is impossible without mankind.
By reason of the particular position of the One who came on earth and was called Jesus, and being Supreme in that position, He could reveal the essences of the Son of God for all to see and to share. His body as an individual represented the body of mankind, but it is the body of mankind that is the Body of the Son of God. In His ministry on earth, in all that He said and did, was conveyed the truth in essence, the truth which is true of man as a whole. The attitude that has been taken has been one which has caused Him to be isolated, as though He alone was the Son of God, but this certainly was not indicated by anything that He said or taught or revealed. He simply provided an exemplification in which all might share.
In later books which have been included in the New Testament, Paul provided some rather obscure dissertations with respect to the Law and what he called Grace. From what he wrote it is evident that he did not clearly see the simple truth. One aspect of the Law might be defined as the principle of cause and effect. As long as the cause is wrong the effect will be likewise. If man is in the position of cause and he is wrong, then the effects in his experience will be wrong. And as long as he remains wrong cause there is nothing he can do to change the nature of the effects. So it was indicated that salvation did not come by the Law, but the fact of the matter is that it does come by the Law; it couldn't come without the Law. However, the grace to which Paul had reference is really the opportunity that man has to let the cause, which he is, be changed, so that being right cause there might be right effects under the working of the Law. The experience of right cause and consequent right effects is salvation and is brought to pass by the working of the Law. However, without the grace, which is the opportunity for man to experience this essential change, the Law will faithfully reproduce in wrong effects the wrong cause, which man is. Human beings have been trying over the millennia to change the pattern of effects without exhibiting any willingness to let the nature of the cause be changed.
We begin to see that when the cause is as it should be, when man is as he should be, then the effects are as they should be; but there is no possibility of a peaceful, harmonious, satisfactory, healthy state on earth as long as man functions in a way which causes the Law to bring forth effects which are the result of his own wrong state of consciousness. It is possible for the state of consciousness in man to change. This possibility is the grace which is offered. It was not offered just by Jesus Christ. It was offered long before Him and it has never ceased to be offered. However we do have the clearest evidence, the clearest example, of the nature of that grace revealed through Jesus Christ.
His body was placed in a tomb, presumed to be dead, so that it was wrapped about with graveclothes upon which certain spices had been sprinkled; and His body thus bound was placed in the tomb. A stone was rolled upon the entrance to the tomb, so that presumably inside it was dark. His body represented the body of mankind. The condition of His body in the tomb represents the condition of the body of mankind in the world. In the darkness of the tomb there is no consciousness of the Garden; any consciousness that there is is of the tomb state.
The tomb state, in which mankind finds himself, is not the true state. His experience does not belong in that state; nevertheless the body of mankind has existed in this tomb, bound by the graveclothes, with a little sweet smell to cover up the stink, for thousands of years. The only consciousness that man has had has been that of the tomb state. The darkness comprehends not the light. He sees nothing else than what he is capable of observing in the tomb; he sees everything through a glass darkly; he sees nothing clearly. He does not see the way things really are, because he's in the tomb, not in the Garden. Consequently he translates all he sees on the basis of this obscuring consciousness which he has, and he lies there bound in the tomb imagining that this is the natural, or normal, condition. He has lost all memory of anything else and he tries to explain this condition away as though it were some inevitable experience established by ... God perhaps, or by the processes of his various theories of evolution, or what have you. But the working of the Law in the tomb state maintains the state a tomb, and as long as his consciousness is the consciousness of death he remains in the tomb. And man's consciousness is oriented to death; he sees this as the one inevitability. He has a death consciousness. He has tried in various ways to get rid of this death consciousness but the Law works inevitably to maintain the death state.
There is no salvation that way. There must be grace; in other words, a means by which his consciousness of death may be changed to a consciousness of life. This occurred insofar as our Master Himself as an individual was concerned. The graveclothes were laid aside. How? The Law worked to lay them aside. The stone rolled away from the mouth of the tomb. How? The Law worked to roll it away. The body of Jesus came forth from the tomb. How? The Law worked to bring it forth, and He stood, living, in the Garden. In what worked out with respect to Him the cycle was initiated with respect to the whole body of mankind.
First of all the body of mankind must reach a point where there is a consciousness of the fact of being in the tomb. There is no such consciousness at the moment in the vast majority of people. This is the only state they know; therefore it must be the state, the normal condition; but it is far, far from it. It is inconceivable to most that there could be any other condition, although they work desperately in the tomb to try to make another condition appear. But as long as one is in the tomb the experience is of the tomb state; it can't be any other way. The Law keeps it that way. The consciousness of man is death-oriented, and the only place for a death-oriented person is in the tomb. That's where he belongs, that's where mankind has belonged, and the Law has proved it out.
There is no salvation through the Law without Grace, but when the grace is experienced the working of the Law provides the salvation. It isn't as though the Law is going to be suspended so that we poor creatures who have been subject to the working of the Law for so long and been condemned to such misery by some ... evil God? ... might at last be released from His bondage. What nonsense! Man keeps himself in the tomb state; it is nobody else's fault, if we wish to place blame. And if we find ourselves at any time in that state we may know why. It is utterly futile to imagine that there are some evil people over there somewhere who are maintaining the ill condition with respect to ourselves. This is the popular viewpoint which man has held all down through the ages. He just had to conquer the evil ones and then, having done that, everything would be just beautiful. But it never was, because there is no salvation under the Law without Grace, without man himself changing position. As long as he insists upon maintaining his false position he stays in the tomb. The Law keeps him there.
But the cycle was initiated back there through what has been called the resurrection. Just as the body of Jesus was unjustly treated, tortured, hung upon the cross, pronounced dead and placed in the tomb, so is it true of the body of mankind. Human beings themselves have condemned themselves, have produced injustice which, incidentally, cannot be corrected in the tomb state. No amount of effort will make the tomb state a just state from the standpoint of a death-oriented consciousness. It is a just state from the standpoint of the working of the Law. Not one jot or tittle passes from the Law; all is fulfilled. One cannot escape the Law. One cannot be lifted out of the Law somehow into some imaginary perfect state. The Law works throughout the whole cosmos, eternally.
We need to accept the fact of the Law but recognize that we do have the opportunity to allow a change to occur so that our consciousness might be life-oriented. So the abuse and the injustice that was placed upon the body of Jesus by human beings has been placed, by human beings, upon their own body; and the condition which is therefore experienced is that of the tomb. This is the state that human beings know on earth. It is the tomb state. Very few have the fortitude, have what it takes, to acknowledge this fact, because they still imagine that somehow or other they are going to manipulate events and change the condition to the experience of the Garden. But as long as the body is in the tomb it's in the tomb, and the experience must be the tomb state.
Now this body of mankind has been bound about with the graveclothes. A good deal of effort has been put forth to raise the standard of living—which is really the standard of dying—and spices have been sprinkled on the graveclothes and it seemed to be beneficial for some, but the overall state stinks. And how shall the graveclothes be laid aside? By the working of the Law, when the state of consciousness changes.
There has been one very widely held belief incorporated into the doctrines of men that have been called Christianity, and that is that somehow or other our sins have been forgiven because Jesus died on the cross. This is a nice fancy if you can believe it, but it certainly isn't true. The creative cycle by which the salvation of mankind has been made available to mankind was opened on the basis of the fact of what happened to Him. Of course that needn't have happened to Him. It only happened to Him because human beings insisted on it. It wasn't something inevitable, except as human beings made it inevitable. It wasn't God's will in any way, shape or form. It was something that human beings imposed. But we may recognize that God is quite capable of using all things to advantage, and He used even that. He didn't design it to be that way—Judas certainly didn't do God's will—but seeing that human beings insisted upon making it that way it was used by God to advantage and the cycle was initiated by which mankind could experience salvation by the working of the Law.
Forgiveness, as our Master plainly stated when He was on earth, comes as one forgives. In other words, the Law works. “As you forgive, so are you forgiven.” It has nothing whatsoever to do with Jesus' dying on the cross. It is convenient to wriggle out from accepting the requirements by which grace may be accepted, may be experienced. Part of the acceptance of that is in the attitude of forgiveness, so that the graveclothes, the binding limitations, may begin to be removed from the body of mankind.
Most people are very much concerned about their own salvation. Why? Because in the tomb there is a self-centered state. The concern is not rightly for the individual, actually, except as the individual is a part of the body of mankind. The concern is for the body of mankind, because man was created in the image and likeness of God to be on earth the revelation of the Son of God in the achievement of the purposes of God for this world. Mankind is necessary to that; mankind is consequently important; and because human beings individually compose the body of mankind they are important. But for this, for nothing else. We have no slightest importance in the tomb, as long as we stay there. There is a potential of importance while we are in the tomb, because the body may come forth and we may share in the the resurrection on earth, not in some imaginary hereafter. We belong on earth. This is where there is the need to experience a change from damnation to salvation.
There is the stone upon the entrance, or the exit—both, you know—to the tomb, and that has to be rolled away. We may see this stone in various lights, but we may recognize that if there have been those on earth who assumed the responsibility for spiritual authority, in assuming that responsibility they could either open the door for others to come out of the tomb into the Garden or they could keep it closed. In view of the fact that we are still in the tomb it is quite obvious that this door has been kept closed. Those who have assumed the authority of what may be called the priesthood all down through the ages—no matter what the religion may have been called, what the pattern may have been—by assuming that authority accepted the responsibility of opening the door for mankind to come out of the tomb into the Garden. But they blocked the way rather than leading the way. I am not saying these things in condemnation of anyone, merely facing the fact. And in every generation there have been most earnest and sincere people who have participated in various ways in assuming authority with respect to others in a spiritual sense, but no matter how earnest and sincere they were, as long as they themselves remained death-oriented they remained in the tomb and they kept everybody else in the tomb. And this is the fact of the matter now.
What about all of us sitting here? Doi we presume to accept authority in this regard? If we do, because we have seen something of the truth, have we really accepted the responsibility of opening the door? Or do we stand as a stone on the mouth of the tomb, refusing to come out ourselves and consequently refusing to let anyone else come out through us?
The One who came on earth in the body of Jesus, and who has been called the Son of God, is not present in form on earth at this time. But we are. How shall He come on earth if not through us and through those who accept the responsibility of rolling away the stone from the mouth of the tomb that His Body may come out? When He has a Body on earth, there He is in the midst of it: but as long as the Body is kept in the tomb, what has been hopefully called the second coming of Christ, or Jesus, remains just a fanciful imagination; it has no reality at all. He comes on earth through His Body. If His Body is lying horizontally in the tomb, bound around with graveclothes, a stone upon the mouth of the tomb, how can He walk again on earth in His Garden? We presumably aspire to be the means by which the stone is rolled away from the tomb. If this is to be so it is by reason of the fact that we let the Grace of God work in us; that is, let our consciousness be changed and resurrected so that it is life-oriented rather than death-oriented.
Everything in the tomb insists that the consciousness of man should be death-oriented. That's a fact, isn't it? You must accept death. This is the inevitable experience! Of course ... in the tomb. But if you believe simply what you think you see in the tomb, then the Garden is denied. The Garden has been denied in fact. In imagination it may have been believed in: Perhaps we'll go to heaven after we're dead; perhaps we'll evolve to the point where it's heaven on earth—all sorts of theories. Perhaps we'll reincarnate a sufficient number of times so that finally we'll be perfect people and then we'll have a lovely state on earth. But what nonsense! All in imagination. What is the fact of the matter now? We're in the tomb, and as long as we stay in the tomb we experience the tomb state. We exist for a little while and then decay. Anyone who takes the attitude that this is what God intends is certainly playing with blasphemy.
Does God intend that man should be held bound in a tomb? Why was our Master's body in the tomb? Because man put Him there. And we have put the Body of the Son of God in the tomb and kept it there. We complain about all the injustices and all the diseases and all the troubles and all the miseries that we experience. We try to change it so manfully, without too much effect, because we're in the tomb and it can't be changed. The Law keeps it that way because we keep it that way. Our death-orientation, which denies the Truth of Life, makes it impossible for anything to be experienced in this world but damnation.
Was it man, having put our Master's body in the tomb, that got Him out? There have been some theories devised on that score, haven't there? Oh yes, somebody came along and dragged His body out, gave Him an attunement perhaps, fixed Him up, secreted Him away somewhere. Ugh! He came forth from the tomb all right—something that is incomprehensible to those who are in the tomb. How could it be? Silly human intellects try to figure it all out, or deny it altogether, while existing in the tomb. They know nothing, and all that can be known in the tomb is nothing. Oh, we have such a vast increase of knowledge, such tremendous progress—which is being called in question these days, at last, because it isn't anything of the sort. The knowledge has not contributed one iota to the true knowing of anything, because nothing can be known in the tomb. And that's what is known in the tomb—nothing. But it's counted in the world as being so tremendous. “Oh, the genius of man!” Only as there comes a recognition of the true state of affairs, and we're not afraid to acknowledge it, is there any basis for a change in consciousness, any basis for the experience of what has been called grace. But as we do come again to the point of honesty, to the point of being honest with ourselves, we see the whole disgusting mess produced simply by man in his death-oriented consciousness, his isolation from God. And the one who should be a revelation of the Father on earth—mankind—has been a body in a coma in the tomb, unconscious of anything else but the tomb.
And, you know, when the body is resurrected from the tomb, comes forth to experience the state of the Garden, there is no body in the tomb. Is it then a tomb? What is it that makes it a tomb? Because there's a body in it. So what has seemed to be a tomb is no longer a tomb. It is found to be a proper part of the Garden. But the Garden is far more than what was a tomb.
As we share this hour together now in the Chapel on Sunrise Ranch we may see the truth and accept responsibility for it, that we ourselves may let a change of consciousness be experienced to bring us to the fulness of orientation in life. Yes, we have to deny a lot of things that we have assumed to be true. Our Master said something about that, didn't He? “Deny yourself.” Deny yourself the pleasure, or what you think is the pleasure, of being death-oriented and enjoying that miserable state. People are so afraid to let go of it, thinking they are going to lose something. No, what we lose is nothing—the tomb state, that's all—because the Law works as it always has and it always will, inevitably, inexorably, to bring the resurrection, just as it has been working inevitably, inexorably, to maintain the tomb state.
Let us be willing to let it work as God intended it to work in relationship to this world, through man—through man, who is restored to the position of the Son of God on earth, the only begotten Son of God for this world. There is no other. Perhaps we are fortunate in this. If there were some other way of handling the situation than through man probably we wouldn't be here anymore. But it is the only begotten Son of God; man is this for this world and it is through man that salvation comes. It is through the Son of God that salvation comes; not as something separate from man, working on man, but it is the experience of man himself extended to all created things on earth, and beyond.
This is the meaning of Easter, something which may flower forth in our consciousness and understanding, in our experience, as we are willing to let it be so, restored to an orientation in life, that what has been blocking the mouth of the tomb may be rolled away and the Body of the Son of God, released from the graveclothes, may come forth to walk with God in the Garden.
O LORD, accepting the spirit of forgiveness which extends from Thee, we would extend that spirit to all who are present with us on earth, that we may impose nothing upon anyone which would bind them more tightly in the graveclothes in the tomb. We would release each person from the bondage of our judgments and condemnations, our attitudes of resentment and envying and jealousy and fear. We would let the Law working through us set the graveclothes on one side and we would do nothing at any time that would block the mouth of the tomb through which any person might emerge into the Garden.
Accepting the responsibility of representing Thee, O Lord, on earth, we would be true to the truth of Thy being, which is our own, so that all who touch our lives may be uplifted, inspired, blessed, encouraged to venture forth from the old state of death-oriented consciousness into the new state of orientation in life, so that the resurrection may begin to unfold in the creative cycle throughout the body of mankind and that body may stir in the tomb and in season, responding to Thy spirit, rise up and come forth, that once again there may be through the working of the Law the true state on earth, the state of the Garden, as it was in the beginning. All glory to Thee, O LORD, all love to Thee. This surely we would offer in this hour and every hour, that Thy will may be done on earth as it is in heaven, that the truth that Thou art the resurrection and the life may be the experience of all who are willing, in the Christ. Aum-en.
© emissaries of divine light
