© 2004 Ken Glasziou
© 2004 The Brotherhood of Man Library
The keys of the kingdom of heaven are: sincerity, more sincerity, and more sincerity. All men have these keys. Men use them–advance in spirit status–by decisions, by more decisions, and by more decisions. The highest moral choice is the choice of the highest possible value, and always–in any sphere, in all of them–this is to choose to do the will of God. If man thus chooses, he is great, though he be the humblest citizen of Jerusem or even the least of mortals on Urantia. (UB 39:4.14)
This God-Spirit-Within did indeed triumph in Jesus’ human mind–that mind which in each of life’s recurring situations maintained a consecrated dedication to the Father’s will, saying, “Not my will, but yours, be done.” Such decisive consecration constitutes the true passport from the limitations of human nature to the finality of divine attainment. (UB 109:6.5)
The will of God is the way of God, partnership with the choice of God in the face of any potential alternative. To do the will of God, therefore, is the progressive experience of becoming more and more like God, and God is the source and destiny of all that is good and beautiful and true. (UB 130:2.7)
The Master thereby chose a program of living which was the equivalent of deciding against miracles and wonders. Again he decided in favor of the Father’s will; again he surrendered everything into the hands of his Paradise Father. (UB 136:6.2)
Jesus agreed that it was proper to want to see social, economic, and political orders improved, but he would always add: “That is not our business. We must be dedicated to the doing of the Father’s will. Our business is to be ambassadors of a spiritual government on high, and we must not immediately concern ourselves with aught but the representation of the will and character of the divine Father who stands at the head of the government whose credentials we bear.” (UB 139:11.9)
The Master came to create in man a new spirit, a new will–to impart a new capacity for knowing the truth, experiencing compassion, and choosing goodness–the will to be in harmony with God’s will, coupled with the eternal urge to become perfect, even as the Father in heaven is perfect. (UB 140:8.32)
When the Father’s will is your law, you are hardly in the kingdom. But when the Father’s will becomes truly your will, then are you in very truth in the kingdom because the kingdom has thereby become an established experience in you. When God’s will is your law, you are noble slave subjects; but when you believe in this new gospel of divine sonship, my Father’s will becomes your will, and you are elevated to the high position of the free children of God, liberated sons of the kingdom. (UB 141:2.2)
On this afternoon the Master distinctly taught a new concept of the double nature of the kingdom in that he portrayed the following two phases:
First. The kingdom of God in this world, the supreme desire to do the will of God, the unselfish love of man which yields the good fruits of improved ethical and moral conduct.
Second. The kingdom of God in heaven, the goal of mortal believers, the estate wherein the love for God is perfected, and wherein the will of God is done more divinely. (UB 170:2.17-19)
Once more the Son of Man was prepared to face his enemies with equanimity and in the full assurance of his invincibility as a mortal man unreservedly dedicated to the doing of his Father’s will. (UB 182:3.11)
These inhuman and shocking experiences which Jesus was called upon to endure in the final hours of his mortal life were not in any sense a part of the divine will of the Father, which his human nature had so triumphantly pledged to carry out at the time of the final surrender of man to God. (UB 183:1.1)
Jesus was convinced that it was the will of the Father that he submit himself to the natural and ordinary course of human events just as every other mortal creature must. (UB 186:2.3)
Jesus had purposed to live without resort to his supernatural power, and he likewise elected to die as an ordinary mortal upon the cross. He had lived as a man, and he would die as a man–doing the _Father’s will. (UB 187:3.6)
It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of truth.
John Locke
The Master desired that his followers should have nothing material to associate with his life on earth. He wanted to leave mankind only the memory of a human life dedicated to the high spiritual ideal of being consecrated to doing the Father’s will. (UB 187:2.9)
The human Jesus saw God as being holy, just, and great, as well as being true, beautiful, and good. All these attributes of divinity he focused in his mind as the “will of the Father in heaven.” (UB 196:0.2)
The faith of Jesus visualized all spirit values as being found in the kingdom of God; therefore he said, “Seek first the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus saw in the advanced and ideal fellowship of the kingdom the achievement and fulfillment of the will of God. The very heart of the prayer which he taught his disciples was, “Your kingdom come; your will be done.” Having thus conceived of the kingdom as comprising the will of God, he devoted himself to the cause of its realization with amazing self-forgetfulness and unbounded enthusiasm. (UB 196:0.8)
Let not the discussions of the humanity or the divinity of the Christ obscure the saving truth that Jesus of Nazareth was a religious man who, by faith, achieved the knowing and the doing of the will of God; he was the most truly religious man who has ever lived on Urantia. (UB 196:1.1)
Jesus was the world’s most wholehearted and devoted religionist. He was a wholly consecrated mortal, unreservedly dedicated to doing his Father’s will. (UB 196:2.7)