At one of the evening conferences,
Andrew asked Jesus: “Master, are we to practice self-denial as John taught us,
or are we to strive for the self-control of your teaching? Wherein does your
teaching differ from that of John?” Jesus answered: “John indeed taught you the
way of righteousness in accordance with the light and laws of his fathers, and
that was the religion of self-examination and self-denial. But I come with a
new message of self-forgetfulness and self-control. I show to you the way of
life as revealed to me by my Father in heaven.
“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
first transformed 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 bondslaves 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.”
Urantia Revelations
