The Understanding of Life

The proclamation of Christ has replaced the belief in an external God by the understanding of life

The Gospel is the revelation of this truth, that the first source of everything is the understanding of life itself. This being so, the Gospel puts in the place of what men call “God” a right understanding of life. Without this understanding there is no life; men only live in so far as they understand life.

Those who do not grasp this, and who deem that the body is the source of life, shut themselves out from true life; but those who comprehend that they live, not through the body, but through the spirit, possess true life. This is that true life which Jesus Christ came to teach to men. Having conceived that man’s life flows from the understanding, he gave to men the teaching and example of a life of the understanding in the body.

Earlier religions were the announcements of law as to what men ought to do, and not to do, for the service of God. The teaching of Jesus, on the other hand, deals only with the understanding of life. No man has ever seen, and no man can see or know, an external God; therefore our life cannot take for its aim the service of such a God. Only by adopting for his supreme principle the inner understanding of life, having for its source the acknowledgment of God, can man surely travel the way of life.

The announcement of salvation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This is the announcement of salvation; all men who come to know they are sons of God receive true life. The foundation and beginning of all things is the understanding of life. Understanding of life is God. This the announcement of Jesus Christ reveals as the foundation and beginning of everything. All is built upon the understanding of life, without which there can be no living. In this is true life.

This understanding is the light of truth. But this light shines amid the darkness, and the darkness is not able to overcome it. The true light has always been in the world, and shines upon all men who come into the world. It has been in the world, and the world existed only because it contained this light; but the world has not adhered to it. This light has appeared in its place, but its place has not retained it.

All those who have grasped the understanding of life have received the opportunity of becoming like it through belief in it. Those who have believed that life is in the understanding have become the sons, not of the flesh, but of the understanding.

And the understanding of life was united with the flesh in the person of Jesus Christ, and so we were given to know that the offspring of understanding, man in the flesh, is of the same nature as his Father, the original source of life.

The teaching of Jesus is the perfect and true faith. In fulfilling the teaching of Jesus, we have understood the new faith which replaces the old. It was law that Moses gave, but we come to understand the true faith through Jesus Christ.

No man has ever seen God; the Son only, who is in the Father, has shown us the way of life.