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SearchThe Origins of Christianity
Some day a reformation in the Christian church may strike deep enough to get back to the
unadulterated religious teachings of Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. You may preach a
religion about Jesus, but, perforce, you must live the religion of Jesus. In the enthusiasm of
Pentecost, Peter unintentionally inaugurated a new religion, the religion of the risen and glorified
Christ. The Apostle Paul later on transformed this new gospel into Christianity, a religion
embodying his own theologic views and portraying his own personal experience with the Jesus
of the Damascus road. The gospel of the kingdom is founded on the personal religious
experience of the Jesus of Galilee; Christianity is founded almost exclusively on the personal
religious experience of the Apostle Paul. Almost the whole of the New Testament is devoted, not
to the portrayal of the significant and inspiring religious life of Jesus, but to a discussion of
Paul‘s religious experience and to a portrayal of his personal religious convictions. The only
notable exceptions to this statement, aside from certain parts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are
the Book of Hebrews and the Epistle of James. Even Peter, in his writing, only once reverted to
the personal religious life of his Master. The New Testament is a superb Christian document, but
it is only meagerly Jesusonian.
Jesus‘ life in the flesh portrays a transcendent religious growth from the early ideas of primitive
awe and human reverence up through years of personal spiritual communion until he finally
arrived at that advanced and exalted status of the consciousness of his oneness with the Father.
And thus, in one short life, did Jesus traverse that experience of religious spiritual progression
which man begins on earth and ordinarily achieves only at the conclusion of his long sojourn in
the spirit training schools of the successive levels of the pre-Paradise career. Jesus progressed
from a purely human consciousness of the faith certainties of personal religious experience to the
sublime spiritual heights of the positive realization of his divine nature and to the consciousness
of his close association with the Universal Father in the management of a universe. He
progressed from the humble status of mortal dependence which prompted him spontaneously to
say to the one who called him Good Teacher, ―Why do you call me good? None is good but
God,‖ to that sublime consciousness of achieved divinity which led him to exclaim, ―Which one
of you convicts me of sin?‖ And this progressing ascent from the human to the divine was an
exclusively mortal achievement. And when he had thus attained divinity, he was still the same
human Jesus, the Son of Man as well as the Son of God.
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Mark, Matthew, and Luke retain something of the picture of the human Jesus as he engaged in
the superb struggle to ascertain the divine will and to do that will. John presents a picture of the
triumphant Jesus as he walked on earth in the full consciousness of divinity. The great mistake
that has been made by those who have studied the Master‘s life is that some have conceived of
him as entirely human, while others have thought of him as only divine. Throughout his entire
experience he was truly both human and divine, even as he yet is.