John 3:16 and Easter

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

Comment:

Traditionalists believe that the “Son” referred to is Jesus Christ, and this is one of the passages they use to support their contention that belief in Jesus as the “only-begotten” Son of God is essential for salvation. In Unity we understand that it is not belief in Jesus that is essential, but rather belief in the universal spiritual Truth of the Christ—the Presence of God in each of us that Jesus taught and demonstrated throughout his ministry. 

Metaphysically we understand the “Son” to be equivalent to the “Word” in John 1:1. It describes the Christ: the creative energy of divine omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence that is the Presence of God in each individual. It is the Christ, the Word, the creative empowerment that our divine Source sends into the world as us to continue the great creative process. 

Each of us is the Christ in potential; Jesus became the Christ in expression, and calls each of us to become the Christ in expression as well, so that we can continue to be about his work of healing, loving, forgiving and empowering, thus bringing into expression the new consciousness that Jesus calls “the kingdom of heaven.”

This is our work to do; it’s our truth to find, believe and express. We must believe this about ourselves, we must allow the example of Jesus to release our own Christ energy in order to accomplish our spiritual purpose. If we don’t, we are “condemned” to continue living in lack and ignorance, waiting vainly for a salvation from without that won’t come until we realize the power we have within ourselves—the power that we truly are.

EASTER:  Because Unity recognizes that every individual is the Christ in potential expression, fully One with the infinite wisdom of God, we don’t really have official dogma that must be believed. Rather, we affirm universal spiritual principles and affirm the right and ability of each person to understand Scripture—or anything else, for that matter—in terms of how those spiritual principles express. One of those principles is that the true nature of every person is divine. We are not humans trying to become spiritual. We are spiritual beings engaged in a human experience through which we can bring more of the Nature of God into tangible expression. If we are divine, then we are eternal; birth and death are mortal illusions allowing us to pass into and out of human experiences. 

So it is not accurate to say that Jesus “died” and returned to life. He moved through the illusion of death and, by virtue of his ability to fully express his Christ self, was able to demonstrate to his followers that death was nothing to fear, because it had no reality. It makes no difference whether his physical body was retained or left behind; certainly many of his closest followers do not recognize the physical appearance of Jesus in their post-Resurrection experiences of him. It’s important to remember that Jesus was not unique in his relationship to spiritual principle; he was unique in his ability to grasp and express that principle. His Resurrection, therefore, affirms that death has no spiritual reality—for Jesus or for us—and therefore there is nothing to fear.

Blessings!

Rev. Ed