The Great Gospel of John
Volume 9
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord in Kis at the Sea of Galilee
- Chapter 129 -
To fear and to love God.
Then I stood up from My chair and went to the table of the Samaritans who also quickly stood up from their chairs and said with deep awe to Me (the Samaritans): "O Lord, Lord, we are sinners and are not worthy that You Yourself come to our table, but speak only one word over us, so that we may become strong in Your light."
2
I said: "You can leave out this too great awe for Me, and grow instead of that, into the right and true love for Me, for it means much more and it is greater to love God above all than to fear Him above all. An exaggerated fear for God drives man ever further away from God and is finally the bad seed out of which in due time will grow paganism with the whole pagan service of idols, superstition and finally complete disbelief.
3
But with full love, man comes ever closer to God, he trusts Him more and more and longs for Him, and thus he is more and more filled with the Spirit of God, because the constantly increasing and trusting love for God is the true and living Spirit of God in man and the spirit of the eternal life in the soul. Therefore, a sinner who repents out of love for God is closer to Him and is more dear to Him than 99 very God-fearing persons who never sinned against a law, and thus, being righteous, never needed to do penance.
4
Just consider a child who has a great fear for his parents because they may have punished him a few times too severely because of his childish naughtiness. Such a child will indeed obey his parents, but not so much out of love, but rather out of fear for the punishment that he can expect if he would sin again against the will of the parents. The presence of his parents will after some time also be unpleasant to such a child, and he will try to free himself out of the situation that is unpleasant to him by leaving the parental house and search his luck, his rest and his comfort in the faraway foreign regions. And he only will come back in remorse to his parents with fear and trembling if he found the opposite of what he though to find in the foreign regions.
5
The same parents have another child who is not so afraid for them, but instead of that, he loves them more and more, does not bother so much about a few admonishments, and will do away with his faults and do their will, thus not out of an ever increasing fear for the severity of his parents, but out of his own ever increasing love for them.
6
Who of the 2 children do you think will be the most beloved one of the parents?"
7
The spokesman said: "Of course the child who has less fear for his parents, but who instead of that has more love and a childish trust in them."
8
I said: "Your opinion is correct and you have given Me a right answer. So you also should be as a child who has more love than fear for his parents. And so love God as the eternal Father of all men, more than that you fear Him as a relentless judge, then you also will not have so much fear or feel shyness for My presence with you as was the case until now.
9
You can believe Me that God loves also the very fearful children, but what concerns the childish, fearless trust towards Him, there are often very crooked ways that have to be walked upon. Without that trust, a soul can never become completely equal to God and be happy and independently free in God, and along those mentioned crooked ways a soul can hardly attain to that. Only great need can bring such children on the right way back to the house of love of his parents.
10
Since the children only become worse instead of better by the chastisements that come from above, those chastisements happen only seldom, and only when all loving attempts have failed on the blind stubbornness of men. That is why God has always such a great patience with the arrogance of men, so that by constant punishments they would not be driven even more away from Him than what they are already doing themselves.
11
And once God had to visit men with the chastising rod in His hand, then He presents in His other hand - although somewhat veiled - His heart to them, so that they would see that God the Father, even if He already has the chastising rod in His hand, still comes to meet them with all love, as this is now also the case before your eyes.
12
But I still add something to this, and all of you remember this well: he who is too fearful in a certain work that he probably will make a mistake by which the work will suffer damage regarding the goal that has to be reached, will also not seldom make great mistakes. But he who works with pleasure and love, without a too great fear to possibly make a mistake, will make good progress in his work, and probably not many meaningful mistakes will be discovered, because the right love with the right trust is not blind as the pagan worldly wise men think, but it sees much sharper than the sharpest worldly reason with its too fearful conscious.
13
Although love has made a mistake here and there, then it quickly and easily can correct it by itself, but when the reason with its fear has made a mistake, then it loses all trust in itself and often does not find any means by which the mistake can be completely corrected.
14
By that I do not want to tell you that a man should put his reason and his conscience completely aside - far from it. But he who let himself be completely mastered by the reason and an exaggerated fearful fright to make mistakes, and to straightly doubt in the much better work of love and its trust, is certainly blind and foolish to a high degree.
15
If you have well understood this now, you will also easily be able to bear My presence, and then you will not want to have the wish in yourself to leave this place as fast as possible out of sheer fear and shyness for Me."
16
After My friendly lesson the Samaritans changed completely. They thanked Me for this teaching and became very trusting.
17
And the chief spokesman said: "O Lord and Master of all things and all life. Only a great love for You has brought us here, because we heard that here or in Nazareth reliable information could be received about where You were staying, and so we traveled to this place with great confidence. Well now, instead of the information that we expected, namely where You are staying, we have met You directly, to our great surprise, and this surprise filled us with a very great fear for Your endless glory. But now You have changed our certainly not unreasonable and also not unjustified fear at once into a trusting love. And therefore we will stay here as long as You will stay here, and we will follow You - if You want - wherever You will go, for we also would gladly like to be Your disciples and spreaders of Your living word."
18
I said: "That is also why I wanted you to search for Me, for I know you very well and also your spirit. But now, continue to eat and drink. After that we will go on with our discussion."
19
They all were satisfied with that, and they now continued to eat and drink without any shyness, and I returned to My place.