“Verily, verily, I say to you, he who rules his own self is greater than he who captures a city. Self-mastery is the measure of man’s moral nature and the indicator of his spiritual development. In the old order you fasted and prayed; as the new creature of the rebirth of the spirit, you are taught to believe and rejoice. In the Father’s kingdom you are to become new creatures; old things are to pass away; behold I show you how all things are to become new. And by your love for one another you are to convince the world that you have passed from bondage to liberty, from death into life everlasting.
“By the old way you seek to suppress, obey, and conform to
the rules of living; by the new way you are firsttransformed by the
Spirit of Truth and thereby strengthened in your inner soul by the constant
spiritual renewing of your mind, and so are you endowed with the power of the
certain and joyous performance of the gracious, acceptable, and perfect will of
God. Forget not — it is your personal faith in the exceedingly great and
precious promises of God that ensures your becoming partakers of the divine
nature. Thus by your faith and the spirit’s transformation, you become in
reality the temples of God, and his spirit actually dwells within you. If,
then, the spirit dwells within you, you are no longer bondslaves of the flesh
but free and liberated sons of the spirit. The new law of the spirit endows you
with the liberty of self-mastery in place of the old law of the fear of
self-bondage and the slavery of self-denial.
“Many times, when you have done evil, you have thought to
charge up your acts to the influence of the evil one when in reality you have
but been led astray by your own natural tendencies. Did not the Prophet
Jeremiah long ago tell you that the human heart is deceitful above all things
and sometimes even desperately wicked? How easy for you to become self-deceived
and thereby fall into foolish fears, divers lusts, enslaving pleasures, malice,
envy, and even vengeful hatred!
“Salvation is by the regeneration of the spirit and not by
the self-righteous deeds of the flesh. You are justified by faith and
fellowshipped by grace, not by fear and the self-denial of the flesh, albeit
the Father’s children who have been born of the spirit are ever and always masters of
the self and all that pertains to the desires of the flesh. When you know that
you are saved by faith, you have real peace with God. And all who follow in the
way of this heavenly peace are destined to be sanctified to the eternal service
of the ever-advancing sons of the eternal God. Henceforth, it is not a duty but
rather your exalted privilege to cleanse yourselves from all evils of mind and
body while you seek for perfection in the love of God.
“Your sonship is grounded in faith, and you are to remain
unmoved by fear. Your joy is born of trust in the divine word, and you shall
not therefore be led to doubt the reality of the Father’s love and mercy. It is
the very goodness of God that leads men into true and genuine repentance. Your
secret of the mastery of self is bound up with your faith in the indwelling
spirit, which ever works by love. Even this saving faith you have not of
yourselves; it also is the gift of God. And if you are the children of this
living faith, you are no longer the bond slaves of self but rather the
triumphant masters of yourselves, the liberated sons of God.
“If, then, my children, you are born of the spirit, you are
forever delivered from the self-conscious bondage of a life of self-denial and
watchcare over the desires of the flesh, and you are translated into the joyous
kingdom of the spirit, whence you spontaneously show forth the fruits of the
spirit in your daily lives; and the fruits of the spirit are the essence of the
highest type of enjoyable and ennobling self-control, even the heights of
terrestrial mortal attainment — true self-mastery.”
