© 1994 Bud Bromley
© 1994 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
| Meeting The Urantia Book | Spring 1994 — Index | Significant Books: The Five Gospels by Robert W. Funk et al |
“Vengeance is Mine [1],” saith the Lord. (Deut. 32:35a.) Interestingly, however, when Jesus chose to read from Isaiah 61:1-2, He chose to stop in the middle of a sentence, not continuing on to, “and the day of vengeance of our God.” (Luke 4:18-20) He not only stopped reading, He “closed the scroll,” as if to emphasize His stopping place. Was Jesus countermanding Deuteronomy and Isaiah? What are the Bible’s most authoritative statements about the character of God?
At Jesus’ transfiguration (Matt. 17:1-8, Mark 9:2-8, Luke 9:28-35), we are told by Scripture that Moses, the great law-giver, and Elijah, the greatest of the prophets, appeared with Jesus. Yet the voice from heaven set Jesus above both of them, saying, “This is My beloved Son; listen to Him.” This must have been deeply shocking to devout Jews. Listen to this Galilean carpenter’s son? Listen to this “new kid on the block” above the long-revered Moses and Elijah? Many of that day could not bring themselves to do so. Yet if we believe that voice from heaven, the teachings of Jesus supersede the mandates of the Pentateuch, and override any human concept of law and any human belief about prophesy. Jesus’ authority exceeds anything in the Old Testament.
In the New Testament, John the Baptist said, referring to Jesus, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30) Paul more ornately said, “I planted, Apollos watered, but the Lord gave the increase. So neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters, but only God Who makes it grow.” (I Cor. 3:6-7) Jesus’ authority is thus established over anyone else in the New Testament.
Jesus said of Himself, “Whoever has seen Me hath seen the Father.” (John 12:45; 14:8-9) This is such a remarkable claim that there is no possible middle ground. Either this is an utterly outrageous lie by a most arrogant confidence man, or else it is an absolute truth about a supernally high spirit personality. Inasmuch as no confidence man has ever been able to impress very many people for such a length of time, I must reject that theory. Jesus does indeed speak with the authority of God Almighty. He also said, “I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but to do the will of Him who sent Me.” (John 6:38), and presumably also to speak the words of the Father Who sent Him.
Jesus is the supreme authority in the Bible, sent directly from God. He alone is qualified to make the most authoritative statements about God. So what did Jesus have to say about God? Jesus asserted that God’s most important requests are that we love Him, and love our neighbors as ourselves. Matthew (22:36-39) records Jesus saying that upon these two commandments depend all of the law and the prophets. This was a very strong endorsement, since, to the Jews, all moral obligation was encompassed by the law and the prophets. (Roman law was a hated imposition, not a moral obligation.) Mark (12:29-31) records Jesus saying that there are no other commandments greater than these, an equally strong commendation. Luke (10:25-28) recorded a Jewish lawyer asking how to inherit eternal life. When the lawyer quoted these two commandments as the answer from the law, Jesus told him, “You have answered rightly; these do and you will live.” If these be the necessary and sufficient conditions to gain eternal life, what more importance could they have? Clearly, then, these are the most important two commandments in the Bible — and they make it clear that love is supremely important to God.
Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment, that you should love one another as I have loved you.” (John 13:34) If Jesus loves us, and if He is showing God to us, then God Himself loves us.
The Urantia Book portrays God as a God of love. “We (Divine Counselors) are nonplused by the increasing unfolding of the endless panorama of the truth of his (God’s) infinite goodness, endless mercy, matchless wisdom, and superb character.” (UB 1:4.4) [2] “…you equally well know that the Universal Father cannot possibly be anything less than an eternal, infinite, true, good, and beautiful personality.” (UB 1:5.2) “…his (Jesus’) life of achieving the Father’s will becomes man’s most real and ideal revelation of the personality of God.” (UB 1:6.8) “God is inherently kind, naturally compassionate, and everlastingly merciful.” (UB 2:4.2) “God is never wrathful, vengeful, or angry.” (italics mine) (UB 2:6.7) “‘God is love’; therefore his only personal attitude towards the affairs of the universe is always a reaction of divine affection.” (UB 2:5.1) “God is divinely kind to sinners. When rebels return to righteousness, they are mercifully received.” (UB 2:5.4) These statements well represent God, as portrayed in The Urantia Book. (And we are but into the first 1.96 percent of the whole book!) [3]
God is a loving heavenly Father. The prodigal son, in Jesus’ parable, when “he came to himself,” was received by his father with love. (Luke 15:11-24) Paul wrote, “There remain faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of these is love.” (I Cor. 13:13) But vengeance is: counterattack, punishment, reprisal, retaliation, retribution, revenge.[4] (Note that “corrective action” is not listed as a synonym for “vengeance.”) On the very cross itself, did Jesus call for vengeance? No! Rather, He said, “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34) Could there ever be any stronger repudiation of vengeance? Remember, He was still showing us what the Father is. If Jesus was right, then there is no vengeance in God in the all-too-human understanding of that word.
Is there, then, no kind of justice in heaven? Of course there is. Jesus said that if someone misled little children, it were better that he had a large millstone hung about his neck, and he be dropped into the depth of the sea! (Matt.18:6, Mark 9:42, Luke 17:2) Note well, however, that Jesus was not saying that we should do this to anyone, nor that God would do it; but he was clearly implying that for sins, there will be an answering.
But does God’s justice require vengeance? Over a century ago, Frederick Faber wrote, in his great hymn, “There’s a kindness in his justice which is more than liberty.” The Urantia Book says that, “Only the discernment of infinite wisdom enables a righteous God to minister justice and mercy at the same time, and in any given universe situation.” (UB 2:4.3) Nevertheless, we mortals can speculate about how God’s combined love and justice might work. There is a beautiful phrase in the Masonic Bible Lecture which would encourage all good men to study the Bible in order to “guide their steps through life by the light they there shall find, and as they there shall find it.” [5] Thus, in our speculating, we should accept the fact that, “Tis with our judgments as our watches; none go just alike, yet each believes his own.” [6]
With this admission, that the light which one may find may differ from the light which another may find, let me start my conjecture about how God might combine love with justice by using another statement from The Urantia Book, “The better man understands his neighbor, the easier it will be to forgive him, even to love him.” (UB 2:4.2) Since God is a God of love, my basic postulate is that, in order to progress spiritually in the Hereafter, we must so grow in loving understanding that we become able to truly love each other. “The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (I John 4:8)
Is there anyone in your life who has, as you presently perceive it, done you a gross injustice? Could you ever learn “to forgive him, even to love him?” There is a striking illustration of this kind of possibility. Visualize, at the mouth of a cave, “…a short, misshapen, filthy, snarling hulk of a man standing, legs spread, club upraised, breathing hate and animosity as he looks fiercely just ahead.” What a brutal savage! Our civilized sensibilities are ready to be offended. But wait; let us learn more. “In front of this animated human crouches a saber-toothed tiger; behind him, a woman and two children.” [7] (UB 100:4.5) That enlarged picture should indeed change our whole understanding. Here is a father courageously defending his family. This makes it easy to rescind our hasty judgment, and “even to love him.”
I know not just what we will be doing in the Hereafter. But if I have offended someone (and who has not?), I aver that I must sooner or later learn to live so nobly that he can become able to forgive me, even to love me. And if I have been offended by someone, then, while he is learning to be lovable, I must learn to be so understanding that I can come to forgive and even to love him. The concept is not new; in his most remarkable story, Dickens tells us of Scrooge, who, when miraculously shown his behavior and its consequences, so changed that he loved, and became loved by, those whom he had earlier wronged.
To expand on this basic postulate, I suggest that at some level in our spiritual growth in the next life, we will reach a point at which we must become able to love everyone, and become so lovable as to be loved by everyone, in order to continue to progress. We cannot hope to fully know the God of love until we learn to fully love.
If Hitler wishes to survive in the next life, [8] he must therein become willing to learn to live and serve so admirably that each and every one of the six million Jews who were murdered under his rule will become able to forgive him, and even to love him, no matter how long it takes. What an awesomely heavy assignment! And he must learn to truly love each one of them whom he once hated unto death. I suggest that this is God’s combined mercy and justice; this is God’s “vengeance.” Further, if I have wronged someone, and I eventually become so understanding, and he becomes so praiseworthy, that I come to truly love him deeply, then surely I will greatly regret the wrong I once did him. This, too, is God’s “vengeance." Hitler will have six million such bitter regrets.
No wonder Jesus taught us to pray, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” (Matt. 6:9-13, Luke 11:2-4) No wonder He admonished us if we have a falling out with someone, to try to settle it quickly. (Matt. 5:23-24) And how wise it was of Lincoln to perceive that “The best way to destroy an enemy is to make a friend of him.”
This concept of God’s vengeance does not satisfy the primitive human urge to “get even,” an urge which is probably one “mark of the beast” within us which we should seek to eradicate. It does allow us to love the Father less fearfully, and, thus, challenge us to love Him more unreservedly.
Bud Bromley is a computer programmer and college teacher, now retired. He has been a student of The Urantia Book for many years.
| Meeting The Urantia Book | Spring 1994 — Index | Significant Books: The Five Gospels by Robert W. Funk et al |
The author chooses to capitalize all references of Deity, regardless of the current custom. ↩︎
The notation, (U. B. 26:6), means page 26 in The Urantia Book, and the 6th full paragraph down the page, starting with the first new paragraph. (Note of Urantiapedia: This notation is not followed throughout this site. Instead a Unique global reference system is used updating articles to it.) ↩︎
See Clyde Bedell’s Concordex for many dozens of further references to “love.” ↩︎
Condensed from several dictionaries ↩︎
This Bible lecture is not secret; indeed, much of Masonry is more open than many outsiders realize. ↩︎
Alexander Pope ↩︎
Neanderthal Man, in Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois ↩︎
“Are ye able to remember, when a thief lifts up his eyes, That his pardoned soul is worthy of a place in Paradise?” From the hymn, “Are Ye Able,” by Earl Marlatt ↩︎