As we journey to Light, we need to clarify just what "Light" is. The business of the Kingdom is Truth. There is no room in spiritual logic for conceiving of truth as a static something out there in the cosmos. Truth is a Person, God Almighty. Lesser truths are whatever God says they are. Saying any other thing is sin, is Darkness. We do not stand by some impersonal truth, but we stand by God's testimony. He made all things, and declares what they should be. In so doing, the chief aim is to reveal the One who created.
Light is the emanation of God's glory. He's glorious because He's right, defines "right." We don't reveal some impersonal truth, we reveal God, by highlighting His rightness -- righteousness. Our chief purpose for existing is glorifying Him. That's the same as revealing Him. We participate in His work of revealing Himself. We are revelation, in that sense.
We get that from following Jesus. Jesus was the singular primary revelation of God in human form. We emulate Him in revealing the glory of the Father. Jesus, at the final moment of teaching in the Upper Room, characterized that work of revelation as walking in love. He characterized that love by washing their feet, and by committing Himself to the Cross. Love is sacrifice. It is the voluntary extension of oneself on behalf of another. That extension is meant to be broken off. Jesus extended His entire sinless self in order to purchase for us the privilege of knowing and entering into that sacrificial love.
Love is choice. It arises from commitment to the King. He defines love, and we reveal Him by acting upon His love as our own love. It will inevitably engender warm feelings when it has been extended, but it hardly waits for them to form. Emotions do not vote, do not lead; they celebrate afterward. Love is a grim business, knowingly facing death. That is the Law of the Kingdom, and it trumps all other expressions of law. It is the choice and commitment we make, the purpose for which we are called into the Kingdom; we are called to lay down our lives by choice.
It is a failure of love when we do not warn those who would enter Kingdom service they are about to die. Evangelism which sells the Kingdom cheaply is a lie. Human souls are incapable of choosing death on that level, until they have been redeemed. Redemption is God's choice alone. He alone initiates the process. He must first bring life to their spirits by His Spirit, or they are unable to choose. If their spirit lives, they will be unable to resist coming into the Kingdom, for it is their new nature to do so. Once in, they are free to choose when they will submit. We make it easier for them to choose when we clarify at the earliest possible moment in their journey that love, light, truth, and self-death are all one thing.
We crucify the old self, which includes all the service to our feelings and intellect. We die to Death and Darkness, and the old kingdom loses us as citizens. We naturalize to the Kingdom of Light. In so doing, we learn the new language of the spirit, a language which is far, far above the language of analytical logic, of propositional truth, objective reason, for these cannot rise above the world. They are of this world, and confined to this world. We die to this world.
We walk in the Kingdom of Light, declare His glory, live His love in a world which cannot know Him. Our service in love does not create new life in dead souls, but is used by the King as the channel in which He alone acts to bring life. It also brings death to those who cannot receive that love. For what little we can know about this mystery, it is not in us nor in those around us, but in God alone what is the difference between those who perish in their sins, and those who rise to new life. Our commitment, our loyalty to the King, our service in the Kingdom is walking in the Light of His Love.
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By Ed Hurst
02 March 2009
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