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God--the Universal Father.
(condensed as a study aid from Urantia Papers 1-5)
"Be you perfect even as I am perfect." This magnificent universal injunction--to strive for the attainment of the perfection of divinity--is both the first duty and must be the highest ambition of all God's struggling mortal children.
Although mortal beings can hardly hope to be perfect in the infinite sense, it is entirely possible for them, starting out as they do, to attain the supernal and divine goal that the infinite God has set for mankind--to seek to attain that level of spiritual perfection revealed by Jesus of Nazareth during his mortal life on Earth.
And that is the true meaning of that divine command, "Be you perfect."
The Universal Father
First and last--eternally--the infinite God is a Father. God is a Father in the highest possible sense of that term. He is eternally motivated by the perfect idealism of divine love and a tender nature that finds its strongest expression and greatest satisfaction in loving and being loved.
The First Father is universal spirit, eternal truth, infinite reality, and father personality--a transcendent reality. But God is even more. He is a saving person and a loving Father to all who enjoy spiritual peace on Earth, and who crave to experience personality survival in death.
Selflessness is inherent in parental love. God loves not like a father but as a father.
The existence of God is utterly beyond all possibility of demonstration, except for the God-consciousness of the human mind and the presence of the God-Spirit that indwells the mortal intellect and is bestowed as the free gift of the Universal Father. It is not there by right of possession--but it is designed to be so for all those who choose to survive the mortal existence.
The Personality of God
The Universal Father is the acme of divine personality; he is the origin and destiny of all personality; he is infinite personality. But although God is much more than a personality as it is understood by man, we equally well know he cannot be anything less than holy, just and great, an eternal, infinite, true, beautiful, loving, and good personality.
Only through a personality approach can we begin to comprehend the unity of God. To deny the personality of the First Source and Center leaves only the choice between two philosophical dilemmas--materialism or pantheism.
God is spirit--spirit personality; man is also spirit--potential spirit personality. Jesus of Nazareth attained the full realization of man's spirit potential. Therefore his life of achieving the Father's will becomes man's most real and ideal revelation of the personality of God.
The God-Spirit-Within
There sojourns within each mortal being a fragment of God, a part and parcel of divinity, the Spirit of God that indwells each individual. And the presence of this indwelling Spirit of God is evidenced by:
The intellectual capacity for knowing God--God-consciousness.
The spiritual urge to find God.
The personality craving to be like God--the whole-hearted desire to do the Father's will.
When the mind believes God and the soul knows God and when, with the fostering of the indwelling Spirit, they all desire God, then is survival of the individual assured.
The material self has personality and identity, temporal identity. The pre-personal indwelling God-Spirit also has identity, eternal identity. Together, the material personality and the spirit pre-personality are capable of so uniting their creative attributes so as to bring into existence the surviving entity--the immortal soul.
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