|
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:
1. The intellectual capacity for knowing God--God-consciousness.
2. The spiritual urge to find God.
3. 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.
The Nature of God
The nature of God can be best understood by the revelation of the Father that Jesus of Nazareth unfolded in his manifold teachings and in his superb life in the flesh.
The divine nature can also be better understood by mankind if individuals regard themselves as children of God--and look up to the Creator as a true and spiritual Father.
God's primal perfection consists in the inherent perfection of the goodness of his divine nature. And God's attributes of love, truth, beauty, and goodness are definitive of the meaning of all such terms.
The creature's need is wholly sufficient to ensure the full flow of the Father's tender mercies and saving grace.
The Love of God
The greatest evidence of the goodness of God and the supreme reason for loving him is the indwelling of his Spirit--the Spirit that so patiently awaits the hour when you both shall, eternally, become as one.
When man loses sight of the love of a personal God, the kingdom of God becomes, at best, merely the kingdom of good. Love is the dominant characteristic of all God's personal dealings with his creatures.
It is the indwelling Spirit of God that individualizes the love of God to each human soul. And man's nearest and dearest approach to God is by and through love--for God is love.
|
|
