The Great Gospel of John
Volume 3
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi
- Chapter 238 -
The inner Word. The reason for the incarnation of the Lord.
When Mathael had spoken the answer that had been laid in his heart before the three, he himself was amazed at such truth in himself and the inner speech that had never been felt so clearly before.
2
But Raphael said to Mathael, "Do you now see how awake the Lord is, even if He now sleeps in the body, and how you now heard the speech of the Lord clearly and distinctly in your heart and then spoke them out loud with your fleshly mouth!? You see, in this same way we also hear the Lord's word and will alive and actively in us, and in such a way that we are then also entirely His word and His will! But if we are that, we are also as His word and His will the completed deed itself, therefore word, will and deed all in one! Do you understand that, friend Mathael, now purely and clearly?"
3
Says Mathael: "Although one is aware inside of a certain reassuring belief and imagines one can now easily understand everything, immediately something else crops up of which one has never dreamed before. I can see from all this that there is such an immeasurable abundance and depth in divine wisdom that no spirit will ever be able to grasp it fully. We shall, therefore, have incessantly to learn and comprehend new things in plenty. And that is quite good so.
4
Truly, I would not at all be pleased if I knew everything now as clearly as the Lord Himself. If in the whole of infinity there were to be nothing unknown to me, I should soon become bored with life. Yet there is such an endless number of densely veiled things with which we could never finish in eternity, and I must now frankly admit that I would not regard God's bliss as enviable if we, as His created beings and children, would see everything as clearly as He Himself, and His eternal and infinite total wisdom must turn into the most horrible boredom if He had to use it merely for Himself.
5
But He filled the endless space therefore with countless works which correspond to His endless wisdom and power, and created thinking beings also endowed with much wisdom. These, constantly moved by such a depth of wisdom and power from God, investigate and wonder at the same time the divine depth of wisdom and power of the Creator, and at every revelation they are brought to further amazement and worship and to the most intensive love!
6
Well, this alone must be for God the real bliss. For Him, as the Creator and Father of angels, worlds, men and children, this alone must be the greatest delight, namely, to give ever more bliss to all those who more and more recognize and love Him and His words!
7
In order to prepare an all the greater holiness for us people of the Earth, for you angels of all heaven and for all creatures of the whole infinity, He came Himself as a person to this Earth in order to reveal Himself as a person Himself with flesh and blood like a human to the others. Friend, being or angel of eternity, or person as I am, the Lord does not do it just for our sake, but for His sake as well; for over time He would be bored to death if in His omniscience then had to acknowledge that He as an extremely formless, eternal, if also most complete intelligence could never be seen by His created beings and even less spoken to and thus would have to remain unrecognized!
8
Would it not be utterly sad for an earthly father who had for instance twenty very lovely children, but all blind and deaf, to whom the most loving father could never speak a word and show himself as a man? Just imagine such a relationship: An exceedingly well-to-do father with twenty children of both sexes and of a very handsome appearance, but all deaf and blind. Question: Would not such a father spend enormous sums so that his otherwise lovable children might become able to hear and see? How sad will he be when he finds out that there is no remedy in the whole world to give hearing and sight to his children!
9
Well, we humans are seeing and hearing for one another, it is true, and have great pleasure in one another - sometimes even more than is necessary - so that we even can forget the creator; but the holy good Creator, the very wisest Father, would have to do without this holiest pleasure forevermore to be ever recognized, heard and seen by His children! That would not suit at all an eternal Father full of the highest and purest love for His children!
10
In Him is certainly the greater longing to see us, His children, in the state that makes us capable according to His order to see Him, to love Him personally, and to confide in Him without fear for our existence - than to see in us His children who have no understanding of the primal essence of the eternal Father.
11
Therefore, my claim is not too far-fetched when I say: the Lord has not only for our sake, but also for His own, put on flesh and blood and thus come down to this earth to us, His certainly still very uncouth children. He had been planning for eternities what He would do; yet we are now witnessing the realization of the eternally great plan. - Tell me, Raphael, whether I have judged rightly or wrongly!"