 Gnosis of the Creed –by Swami Nirmalananda Giri
Chapter Eight—Who for us men, and for our salvation
 God Is Not A “What,” But A “Who”
The next word in the Creed is of utmost importance: “Who.” Not “What,” for Jesus Christ is a real person, not a vague or impersonal Christ Consciousness principle (though such exists). He, a person, is the bridge between us and the Person: God. The all-pervading, immanent God is a Person, not an impersonal principle of abstract existence. He is not impersonal or non-involved and disinterested, but loves us intimately. Of course, He does not “think” and “feel” as we do, as He said through the holy prophet: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.” He does not have thoughts produced from a brain or finite mind as we do. With Him it is a matter of pure acts of will and being. But still, this God does engage in a perfect process that can be metaphorically called “thoughts” or “feelings” as He acts and responds to His creation.
We must “get personal” with God, as that is the essence of religious practice. We reach out and touch the Personal God, become one with Him through a union of personal love and involvement, and thereby are enabled to ascend to the Absolute, the Transcendental. In essence, all true Christian beliefs and practices are preparations for and expressions of that living contact with God through Christ Who came to earth “for us men and for our salvation.” The Meaning Is Love
When the Creed says: “Who for us,” it is a moving thing, because it means that the hearts of God and Jesus were turned in love toward the world and human beings. God could have said: “All right–no more,” snapped His fingers (which of course He does not have), and just erased the entire range of creation. But He did not, because of His love. Although the word “love” does not appear in the Creed, this phrase affirms the personal feeling of God, the movement of God’s own love, which is His own infinite Being. The nearness of God is something we really need to ponder deeply.
“For God so loved the world….” What a wonderful thing it is to realize that love is the motivation of the descent of Jesus the Christ to earth! It is indeed true that, having plunged the human race into continual birth and death with its attendant sufferings, He Who had been Adam had a great debt to clear. But He did so out of love alone. It had nothing to do with a supposed wrath of God that demanded a sacrifice to satisfy a piqued divine justice.
Jesus came to earth to reveal the love of God which filled Him completely. It would not be mistaken to say that He had no other motive but love, for He had become Love. To look upon Christ as just a sacrifice or a remedy is to depersonalize Him by reducing Him to a function or an office, rather than realizing Him as a living, loving person.
The One Purpose Of The Church
Jesus Christ did not come to reveal an intellectual philosophy but to make God present to our consciousness. When we come right down to it, we can say that He does only one thing: the union of God and the individual consciousness, the spirit. And that is accomplished by love, which is personal. It is not correctness of theology, of mere belief, but correctness of heart.
For this reason the true Christian is one who wishes to know and love God, and the Christian life is the sharing together of God’s life. “Who For Us”
“Who for us.” That small word “us” includes all of us who have received His grace or whoever shall receive it in the future. He did not come “on principle” for an abstract purpose; He came for individual persons. Nor did He come just for the people He met in His short ministry upon earth, but for all–for us, which specifically includes you and me.
Saint Catherine Emmerich tells us that during His agony in Gethsemane, the Lord Jesus saw in a vision every person who would ever be spiritually related to Him throughout the centuries. Each one of them, literally. No matter how many hundreds of millions, or even billions, of Christians there may be in the history of this world, Christ saw each one. The face of each one was known to Him two thousand years ago. Seeing them and loving them, He agreed to undergo the sufferings of His passion and His death on the cross, saying to the Father: “Not my will, but thine, be done.” And this was for love of us.
This is the essence of our faith: that God has loved us with an infinite love, which is His own Being. Long, long before mankind was told through the prophet Moses that we should love the Lord God with our whole being, God loved us with all of His Being. What Are “Men”?
“Who for us men.” Who are “men”? Human beings, obviously. But let us look a little deeper. What makes us human beings? Are we human beings by nature? Before we unthinkingly answer “yes,” let us consider what makes a person “human.”
If we move ahead in the Creed a few phrases, we find: “and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and was made man.” What made Christ man? He took on a human body. Of course the human body is not just physical; it also consists of biomagnetic, mental, intellectual, and will bodies. The human being has many layers, this physical atomic body being only the outermost stratum of the complex that is human nature.
By putting on all the aspects of human nature, Christ became a human being to reveal us to ourselves. Through the Incarnation He revealed that humanness is a matter of consciousness being embodied in human-level physical and mental bodies. It is the placement of consciousness that causes us to experience the human condition. How The Body Affects Us
The immortal consciousness, the spirit, which is within the complex of human bodies, is that which Christ truly loves and came to save. For what does this body and mind complex actually do for (and to) us? It connects and integrates us with this world, and for it to live it must eat, sleep, and maintain itself. This latter, especially, forces us to be involved with earthly and perishable things. And yet Jesus said: “I have overcome the world.” That is, He came to deliver us from the condition described by Saint Paul: “For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members [body], warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members [body]. O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?…So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.” “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.”
Christ Loves The Spirit
Christ loves not our body “clothing” but our pure spirit which is divine, which was with Him in the Bosom of the Father before all ages.
Having arisen to Paradise, Adam and Eve transgressed and were cast out of that psychic world back into the physical orbit of the universe. So they would not remain wandering spirits, forever trapped between heaven and earth, the Elohim, the Mother Goddesses, made them “tunics of skin,” the physical bodies of the human species which had not existed before. The human organism was not part of God’s evolutionary plan, but because of the Fall it was created for temporary habitation until we could reascend to Paradise.
But we, divine sons of God never meant in God’s original plan to inhabit these human bodies, have, by means of forgetfulness of our real nature and our identity with the bodies, so firmly rooted ourselves to this little bit of earth whirling in space that we come here again and again and again. And every time we live out our life as if we were nothing but mortal beings, even our religion being little more than trying to get out of God the material things we want. But religion is true only when it frees us, releases us from the earth bonds, and enables us to ascend into heaven to be free of the orbit of this earth forever.
Death
It says in the Bible: “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” Physical death is not the ending of life, as we commonly think. Rather, birth into this world is death, for when we are pulled into physical manifestation at the time of conception, it is the ending of the awareness of our true life as spirits. Growing in the womb which is a terrible place, then in deep trauma emerging from that womb into a much worse place where the spirit endures pain, frustration, bondage, sickness, grief, and an array of ever-changing, inescapable miseries: that is death. To be living in a body whose cells are decaying every moment of its existence is truly to live in “the valley of the shadow of death.”
The Fathers have told us that what we call death is actually birth into the higher worlds. This is why when we honor saints on the day they left this world, we call it their natalia, their birthday. Moreover, the Fathers have said that the real death is birth into this world. This is the original Christian perspective–not that the Fathers hated or contemned the body and the world, but they abhorred the effect we let it have on us. Once the consciousness is repolarized the body and the world become vessels of the Holy Presence for us.
For Us Men
“For us men”–in other words, for us trapped spirits who are masquerading as mortal beings; for us who are suffering, living, and dying over and over again, believing that the goals of life are mortal goals, that we are only this body, and striving for our little piece of this earthly world which we have to lose each time we die. The Nature Of Salvation
“And for our salvation.” The word here translated “salvation” is sotiria, which has several interesting and significant meanings. (Again we see why Greek was chosen by the Apostles as the teaching language of Christianity.)
The prime meaning of sotiria is deliverance. To be “saved,” then, is to be delivered. What, then, does He deliver us from? He saves us from being human beings. He stops the process of rebirth in what one contemporary metaphysical teacher called “this dumb kindergarten of earth,” and He lifts us back into Paradise so that we can begin once more to ascend the ladder of higher evolution which Adam and Eve so easily threw aside but regained only with such great struggle. He has come to deliver us from the bondage of birth and death in the human body and mind–the whole suffering complex which makes up what we call “man.” Another aspect of sotiria is salvation in the sense of rescue, which fits right in with what has just been said.
But salvation is not just a deliverance in the external sense of freeing us from earthly bonds. It is also a restoration of our inner integrity, the healing and restoration of all levels of our being, the regaining of spiritual sanity. Another meaning of sotiria is, appropriately, health.
A fourth meaning of sotiria is defense. This fits in the foregoing in the sense that salvation makes us strong in our spiritual immune system, able to “quench all the fiery darts of the wicked” forces of ignorance and forgetfulness.
We Are Gods–Not Men
Salvation does not save us as human beings–it restores us to our innate divinity. For we are not really “men”–we are gods.
Adam and Eve were potential gods with God, and then were cast down and made humans. If Christ came to make us humans forever, then He came to seal us forever in that separation from God which is the kingdom of death. Even if we were physically immortal, we would still be in the realm of spiritual death; and thus Lucifer would have won, for he would have deprived us of attaining union with God.
If we were to remain perfect human beings for eternity, it would be a terrible denial of what we really are. In fact, it would be a victory for evil, for Lucifer’s plan is to stop all beings from ascending to divinity.
Just as the false doctrine of everlasting hell carries within it the implication that the devil gets his way with the “damned” forever, so also the false doctrine of “heaven” implies the same, for it denies the ascent to oneness with God.
The Sons Of God
At the beginning of Saint John’s Gospel we find: “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.” The immortal God has only divine, immortal sons. Christ has opened up the path to ascension, back to the Bosom of the Father.
The parable of the Prodigal Son is the story of the spirit falling away from God’s Being, coming down into this world, forgetting itself, then “coming to himself” and returning home. Although he told his father that he was not worthy to be his son but only to be his servant, the father would not accept that and reinstated him to be just the same as he was before he left. His exile and wandering were only temporary stages. He began at home with the father, and he ended there. In this parable the Lord Jesus affirms the eternal destiny of all beings. All are ultimately “saved” through His love and return whence they came.
The Goal Is One
There is another important point: the goal is exactly the same for all, for the goal is God. This is shown by the parable of the laborers in the twentieth chapter of Saint Matthew’s Gospel. No matter how long or briefly the workers had labored, all got the identical payment. There will be no heavens with bigger and smaller mansions, higher and lower crowns, brighter or lesser halos or “glories,” for the goal is union with the transcendent God in Whom there are no such distinctions.
There are those who wander long in the world in incarnation, and there are those who go for a short time only into the world for incarnation, but they all receive the same reward. They all go back to the Father. Salvation And Sin
True salvation is deliverance from being a limited, mortal human being. Sin, on the other hand, is the condition of not being god.
The Greek word we translate as “sin” is amartano, which means to miss or fall short of the mark, as in archery. Actions such as killing, lying, and stealing are sins only obliquely. Actually, they are the symptoms of sin, just as the red blotches and little blisters that appear on the skin are not themselves the diseases of measles and chicken pox, but the indications of the presence of the diseases–which are conditions of the body. In the same way, the actions we call sins are really only the manifestations of the state which is amartano–sin.
Misunderstanding The Nature Of Sin
Since we misunderstand the nature of sin, we think that the only thing the matter with us is the commission of wrong actions, and that we need only to be “forgiven” by God for them. But this is mistaken on two counts.
First, God is not “angered” or “offended” by us, as false theology has taught people for centuries. The image of a wrathful and vengeful God was grafted into the Church by the converts from paganism who believed in and feared “the anger of the gods.” In pagan religions the anger of the gods was the only concept that kept their adherents in line. (The sun-drenched natural uninhibited joie de vivre of the ancients that was supposedly disrupted by the advent of Christianity is only a myth in the frustrated minds of contemporary anti-Christians.)
When, at the time of Constantine and after, the pagans joined the Church for political reasons, they carried their superstitions into the Church. When they came to be in the majority, their errors displaced the authentic Christian teachings in these matters. “Christian” Emperors who saw Christianity as a tool for “law and order” naturally wanted the twin concepts of an angry God and everlasting damnation propagated to frighten people into “doing good.” But a lie cannot produce any positive effect.
Secondly, sin in its basic constitution is, as we have said, a condition which makes us prone to evil actions. So it is not forgiveness we need, but liberation from the state of sin, the liberation that is implied in the Creed’s expression “the remission of sins.”
There is another side effect of this misunderstanding about sin. Since the law is: “Seek, and ye shall find,” if all we ever want is to escape from the bad effects of our sinful actions and not from the bitter root within our hearts that produces those actions, we will never be freed, but will be caught in a perpetual cycle of sinning. We may manage to wipe out or expiate our sins–or “bad karmas”–to some degree, but at the same time we will be adding new ones to the list!
We have to quit being sinners–we have to rise to that state where we will no longer commit these acts of ignorance. That is the condition of spiritual perfection the Lord Jesus commanded us to seek when He said: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” And Saint John wrote: “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.”
This is the state we must attain. But if all we seek from God is escape from the effects of evil actions, then we will continue orbiting perpetually in these patterns of human behavior. If we do not seek that true birth, that true resurrection, we will not attain it. We will then never be anything other than sinners.
We Must Be Saints
We must become saints. Or, more truthfully, we must become gods, for that is what the saints are in reality. They are holy with the holiness of God, with Whom they are one. His holiness, His life, is theirs. They are one with Him in nature, just as is the Only-begotten Son.
Saint John of Kronstadt speaks of the state of the saints in My Life in Christ, in which he says they have the omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence of God. This was true of Saint John himself. He said that whenever a person spoke his name or simply thought of him anywhere in the world, he was immediately aware of it. Thousands of people were speaking and thinking of him at the same time, and he was aware of every single one. Consider what that indicates about his state of consciousness. He was truly a Son of God, having passed beyond humanity unto divinity. So also have all the saints, and when we pray to them, we pray to God.
The Purpose Of The Incarnation
The purpose of the incarnation of Christ is not to keep us from being “bad” or going to hell, but to deliver us from “the body of this death”–from this earth and from the human state of being. Not that being human is bad in itself–on the contrary, it is good as long as we are evolving through and beyond that state. But through ignorance our humanity has become a trap rather than a passage to higher evolution.
So if we are truly Christians, we are seeking to cease being human, for we are called to godhood. Therefore Saint Paul wrote: “No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.” For it is true: in this spiritual struggle upward to God, we cannot serve God and mammon [materiality]. This is why the early Christians sold all their possessions, pooled their resources, and lived together in a simple, subsistence manner. They wished to become gods and be no longer men, never returning to this world of ignorance. If We Believe
If we truly believe the Creed, we will seek to become gods and not be content with merely tipping our hats at God on Sundays. (And the majority of people in the world do not even do that.) Even though we have to make a living in this world to survive and not starve, at the same time we can make the struggle to become one with God the pivotal point of our life. Though we might have to live a mundane mode of life for decades, if when our work is done we use our free time to plunge deeply into the depths of our being through meditation and pursue that higher consciousness and life, we will in time be freed by God.
The Lord said: “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed,” meaning that we shall be freed on all levels of our being from any compulsion to turn back into this world. We shall have no obligations except to God. This is the way to live out the phrase: “for us men and for our salvation.” More chapters of the Gnosis of the Creed:
• Chapter One—The Nicene Creed
• Chapter Two—I believe
• Chapter Three—In one God, the Father almighty
• Chapter Four—Maker of heaven and earth, And of all things visible and invisible
• Chapter Five—And in one Lord
• Chapter Six—Jesus Christ
• Chapter Seven—The Only-begotten Son of God, Begotten of the Father before all ages. Light from Light, True God from true God. Begotten not made, Being of one substance with the Father; By Whom all things were made.
• Chapter Eight—Who for us men, and for our salvation
• Chapter Nine—Came down from heaven
• Chapter Ten—And was incarnate by the Holy Spirit
• Chapter Eleven—Of the Virgin Mary. And was made Man.
• Chapter Twelve—He was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. Suffered and was buried.
• Chapter Thirteen—And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures. And ascended into heaven. He sitteth at the right hand of the Father.
• Chapter Fourteen—And He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead.
• Chapter Fifteen—Of Whose kingdom there shall be no end.
• Chapter Sixteen—And in the Holy Spirit, the Lady and Giver of life: Who proceedeth from the Father. Who together with the Father and the Son Is worshipped and glorified. Who spoke by the prophets.
• Chapter Seventeen—And in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
• Chapter Eighteen—I confess one baptism for the remission of sins.
• Chapter Nineteen—And I look for the resurrection of the dead. And the life of the age to come. Amen.
1) Isaiah 55:8 [Go back]
2) “God is love.” (I John 4:8,16) [Go back]
3) John 3:16 [Go back]
4) Luke 22:42 [Go back]
5) “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” (Deuteronomy 6:5). [Go back]
6) John 16:33 [Go back]
7) Romans 7:22-25. By “members” Saint Paul also means the various bodies and their faculties, not just the limbs and senses of the physical body. [Go back]
8) Galatians 5:17 [Go back]
9) The word “God” in the Genesis account of the creation of Adam is incorrect. The Hebrew term Elohim is both feminine and plural, i.e., “goddesses.” [Go back]
10) Genesis 3:21 [Go back]
11) I Corinthians 15:26 [Go back]
12) Psalm 23:4 [Go back]
13) Ephesians 6:16 [Go back]
14) John 1:12 [Go back]
15) Luke 15:11-32 [Go back]
16) Matthew 20:1-14 [Go back]
17) Our higher self, the “god within” is however angered and offended–in a sense–and does indeed at times take charge and show us the truth of our deeds by presenting them to us in the mirror of just retribution. For example, the higher self of a person who consistently misuses his intelligence from life to life will eventually cause him to be born mentally deficient for one or more lives until he gets the picture and stops the offence. Once a young man with a club foot visited Paramhansa Yogananda. Upon his departure one of Yogananda’s disciples commented: “How sorry I feel for that crippled man.” “I don’t!” countered the Master, “he kicked his mother in a past life so he has a club foot now.” Those who misuse their bodies are born with defective bodies in future lives, those who misuse their wealth are born poor, and so on. [Go back]
18) “A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit” (Matthew 7:18) [Go back]
19) Matthew 7:7; Luke 11:9 [Go back]
20) Hebrews 12:15 [Go back]
21) Matthew 5:48 [Go back]
22) I John 3:9 [Go back]
23) Romans 7:24 [Go back]
24) II Timothy 2:4 [Go back]
25) Matthew 5:24 [Go back]
26) “And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, And laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.” (Acts 4:32,34,35) [Go back]
27) John 8:36 [Go back] |
