Who is Jesus, really? Is he our savior? Is he the Son of God? And what is our relationship to Jesus, and to God?
Last week a question and answer appeared in the Weekly Bulletin of the Conversations with God Foundation and drew a sudden and considerable response. I started receiving tons of mail in my email box…and I knew that I had struck a chord. So much so that I have received to reprint that Q&A here in the Tuesday session of Sunday School All Week.
I would be delighted to receive your comments on this…
CwG Reader’s Question: Dear Neale:..I have always believed that Jesus was a savior to all mankind. After reading CWG, I’m not sure. What is the truth as you know it? Craig, Williamstown, NJ.
Neale’s Response: Dear Craig, You’ve asked what many consider to be the central question of the century. The impact of Jesus’ life was so extraordinary, it will never be forgotten. That is because Jesus was-is-a savior to all mankind. As are you and I.
Now, the difference between you and me and Jesus is that he donned the mantle, wore the cloak, accepted the responsibility. Most of us have not. In that sense, Jesus is our savior. For he did with his life what very few of us have done with ours. He did what we all came here to do! And in so doing it, he “saved” us from the necessity of doing it at all, if we do not wish.
Let me explain. We have all come to save the world. Not from the “snares of the devil,” or from “everlasting damnation.” (As CWG teaches, there is so such thing as the devil, and damnation does not exist.) We have come to save the world from its own mistaken notion of itself.
We are, right now, living in a world of our own creation, a non-truth, an experience which has nothing to do with ultimate reality, or with Who We Really Are. Jesus knew this. He also knew Who He Really Was. And he declared it, for all to hear. He declared something else as well. He said that what he did on the earth, we could do also.
Some people do not believe this. They cannot believe that they could be given-indeed, that they have been given-the same abilities as Jesus. Yet this level of faith is the key to experiencing those gifts. That is what Jesus taught. That was his central message. I think a careful reading of the following pages (CWG Book 1) would help provide clarity for you about this: pages 52, 55, 67, 86, 180 and 197.
I wrote a booklet, Recreating Yourself, which addresses much of this directly. In it, I make the point that it was Jesus himself who said, “According to your faith be it unto you.” It was Jesus himself who said, “0 woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.” And the woman’s daughter was made whole from that very hour. And it was Jesus himself who said, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.” Still, if you cannot believe in yourself and in your own divine heritage (and because so many people cannot), Jesus, in an act of enormous love and compassion, invites you to believe in him.
“Verily, verily I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.”
Isn’t that an extraordinary promise? So great and so complete was Jesus’ understanding of who he was, and of who you are (“I and my Father are one” he said, and later, “all ye are brethren”), that he knew deeply there was no limit to what you could do if you believed in yourself, or in him. Could there be a mistake about Jesus’ declarations here?
Could there be a misinterpretation? No. His words are very clear. He wanted you to consider yourself one with the Father, exactly as he is one with God. So great was his love for all humankind, and so full was his compassion at their suffering, that he called upon himself to rise to the highest level, to move to the grandest expression of his being, in order to present a living example to all human beings everywhere. And then he prayed that we would not only see the evidence of his oneness with the Father, but our own as well.
“And for their sakes I sanctify myself that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one.”
You can’t be much clearer than that.
Conversations with God tells us that all of us are members of the Body of God, though we imagine ourselves to be separate, and not part of God at all.
Christ understood our difficulty in believing that we were part of God, part of God’s very body. Yet Christ did believe this of himself. It was therefore a simple matter (and a marvelous inspiration) for him to invite those who could not imagine themselves to be a part of God to imagine themselves to be a part of him. For he had already declared himself to be a part of God, and if we could simply believe that we were a part of Christ, we would by extension necessarily be a part of God.
Jesus must have emphasized this point many times, because the record of his teachings, and the commentaries upon them in the Bible contain countless references to this relationship. String just a few of these separate references together and you have an extraordinary revelation:

I and my Father are one. (John 10:30)
And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one. (John 17:22)
I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one. (John 17:23)
That the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them. (John 17:26)
So we, being many, are one body in Christ; and every one members one of another. (Romans 12:5)
Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one. (1 Corinthians 3:8)
For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread. (1 Corinthians 10:17)
For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or gentiles, whether we be bound or free; and have been all made to drink into one spirit for the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? (1 Corinthians 12-16)
But now are they many members, yet but one body. (1 Corinthians 12:20)

All of us are members of the Body of Christ. All of us are the Christed One. And if Christ is one with God, so, too, are we. We simply do not know it. Refuse to believe it. Cannot imagine it.
Yet it is not true that going through Jesus is required in order to be going with Jesus. Jesus never uttered such words, nor did he come close. That was not his message. His message was: If you cannot believe in me, if you do believe that I am who I say I am, what with all that I have done, then you will never, ever believe in yourself, in who you are, and your own experience of God will be virtually unattainable. Jesus said what he said, did what he did-performed miracles, healed the sick, raised the dead-even raised himself from the dead-that we might know Who He Was…and thus know also Who We Really Are. It is this second part of the equation which is most often left out of the traditional doctrine about Christ.
You see, Jesus is our savior, to the degree that he has saved us from the illusion of our own separation from God. Jesus is the Son of God, as are we all. As we teach in our workshops: You have come to the room to heal the room; you have come to the space to heal the space. There is no other reason for you to be here.
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Now…your comments on the above, class…