Bearing a heavenly image

Bearing a heavenly image

By

Julio C. Rivas, CS

LOVE-GOD gives us all that its infinity possesses.  It gives on an ever-flowing basis, without restrictions.  This non-material, inexhaustible goodness is immortal.  It cannot die, wane, deteriorate, nor be lost.  As we gain this understanding we can experience LOVE’s goodness as ever-expanding life, health, joy, substance, love, success and power. 

The divine PRINCIPLE-GOD, the All-GOOD, and the GIVER of goodness, is unlike the limited, human sense of “God” people pray to.   Also, MIND’s infinite expression is unlike the material sense of existence we commonly perceive.  In fact, incorporeal man and physical man, infinite substance and material substance, the divine and the mortal are opposites which never mix. 

These contradictory views of existence are represented in the first two chapters of the Old Testament book, Genesis.   The first chapter describes a holy expression of MIND-GOD – a perfect, without-beginning-nor-end, manifestation of the divine CONSCIOUSNESS. 

The second chapter contradicts the first one by detailing a material and failed creation. The first one was written 400 years later than the second one.  These 400 years suggest that it took that long for them to rise to a higher plane of spiritual understanding. 

It is through spiritual enlightenment that we escape earthbound misperception.  Paul asks us to leave behind the material for the spiritually infinite: “And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly”, and “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

The translation of consciousness from the human and material to the infinitely spiritual is essential to our health, happiness and advancement.  Without it we cannot reason effectively out of the material illusion, out of problems and pains.  Divinely empowered healing demands reasoning from immortal CAUSE, to an immortal conclusion where material evil is none existent. 

Jesus’ loving and healing ministry drew on MIND. He was conscious that MIND and its manifestation are spiritually and perfectly ONE.  This view corrected human thinking and so it healed human conditions. 

When Jesus raised the widow’s son he was applying his understanding of life’s SPIRIT-drawn immortality.  And his understanding of sinless, spiritual, eternal manhood – of SPIRIT’s man -- encouraged Nicodemus to commence a new life.  We can begin anew; we can be re-born to a new and immortal concept of who we are.

A woman who was raped found freedom from the agonizing experience – from the violence, humiliation and fears -- by focusing on her SOUL-designed, triumphant, spiritual womanhood.  She came to identify with Paul’s statement that it is GOD’s presence – the Christ-spirit—“which worketh in me mightily.”

She asserted that because her genuine womanhood came from SPIRIT, not mortality, it was full of freedom and power over evil.  It became clearer to her that her spiritual womanhood was wedded to SOUL-GOD.

She found courage and confidence in a spiritual definition of “bride” written by profound theologian and thinker, M. B. Eddy.  It says that a heavenly concept of bride “… has spiritual bliss and enjoys but cannot suffer.”  She found her bliss in her heavenly womanhood.

PRINCIPLE-GOD is the great determinant of the minutiae of our spiritual lives.  When we connect with our spiritual, SOUL-empowered self then human downfalls and sufferings fade away. 

An appreciation of our celestial magnificence, which is the outcome of superlative SOUL, purges illness, material heredity, failure, and lack. 

Our immortal essence overflows with health, love, intelligence and attainment.  LOVE expresses in us the image of the heavenly.