Revealed Religion

Revealed Religion

2:6.2 (40.6)Religion implies that the upper world which is of spiritual nature bears knowledge of, and responds to, the fundamental needs of the world of men. Evolutionary religion may become ethical, but only revealed religion becomes truly and spiritually moral. The ancient conception of God as a deity governed by a kingly morality was raised by Jesus to a higher plane, to the warm, stirring level of the intimate family morality in the parent-child relationship, which in the experience of mortals transcends all in tenderness and beauty.

2:6.3 (41.1)The “richness of the goodness of God brings the erring man to repentance. 'Every good gift and every perfect gift descends from above, from the Father of lights.' 'God is good; he is the eternal refuge of the souls of men.' 'The Lord our God is merciful and gracious. He is longsuffering and great in kindness and truth.' 'Taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who trusts in Him.' 'The Lord is gracious and full of compassion. He is the God of salvation.' 'He heals the brokenhearted and binds up the wounds of the soul. He is the almighty benefactor of men.' 2:6.4 (41.2)Although the depiction of God as a king-judge was conducive to a high moral standard and produced a people who as a group had reverence for the law, this concept left the individual believer in sad uncertainty regarding his state in time and eternity. The later Hebrew prophets proclaimed that God was a Father to Israel; Jesus revealed God as the Father of every man. The entire God concept of mortal man is transcendentally illuminated by the life of Jesus. Selflessness is inherent in parental love. God does not love like a father, but as a father. He is the Paradise Father of every personality in the universe.

2:6.5 (41.3)Justice implies that God is the origin of the moral law of the universe. Truth shows God as giver of revelation, as teacher. But love gives and yearns for affection, seeks the understanding intercourse as it exists between parent and child. Justice may be divine thinking, but love is the institution of a father. The false assumption that the justice of God was incompatible with the selfless love of the heavenly Father presupposed the lack of unity in the nature of Deity, and led directly to the development of the doctrine of atonement, a doctrine that is a philosophical attack on both the unity of God and His free will.

2:6.6 (41.4)The loving heavenly Father whose spirit dwells with his children on earth is not a divided personality - one who is righteous and one who is merciful - nor is a mediator needed to obtain the Father's favor or forgiveness. Divine justice is not overpowered by strict retributive justice: God as Father transcends God as Judge.

2:6.7 (41.5)God is never wrathful, vengeful, or angry. It is true, however, that his love is often curbed by wisdom, while justice makes his rejected mercy conditional. His love of justice must well show itself as an equal dislike of sin. The Father is not an inwardly contradictory personality: the divine unity is perfect. In Paradise Trinity there is absolute unity, despite the eternal identities of God's equals.

2:6.8 (41.6)God loves the sinner and detests sin; this statement is true in a philosophical sense, but God is a transcendent personality and persons can only love and detest other persons. Sin is not a person. God loves the sinner because he is a personality reality (potentially eternal), while God does not take a personal stance toward sin, because sin is not a spiritual reality: it is not personal, therefore only God's justice takes cognizance of its existence. The love of God saves the sinner, the law of God destroys sin. This attitude of the divine nature would seemingly change if the sinner were to identify himself finitely with sin, just as that same mortal consciousness can also identify itself completely with the indwelling spirit-Richter. Such a mortal identified with sin would then become entirely unspiritual in nature (and therefore unreal as a person) and would ultimately suffer the destruction of his existence. In a universe that is steadily becoming more real and increasingly spiritual, the unreality and even incompleteness of a creature's nature cannot exist forever.

2:6.9 (42.1)When God turns his countenance to the world of personality, he reveals himself as a li eficient person; when he turns to the spiritual world, he is a personal love. In religious experience, he is both. The volitional will of God is identified by love. The goodness of God underlies the divine volitional will - the universal tendency to love, to be merciful, to show patience and to forgive.

A Thought for Consideration from the Urantia book