David Kantor | Urantia Association International | November 3, 2022
Some Notes on the Religion of Jesus
by David Kantor
Ask anyone in the world what Christianity is about and they likely will tell you a story about the crucifixion and resurrection. Miracles might be mentioned. And while these facts of the Incarnation have continued to dominate Christendom to the present day, the most powerful spiritual elements of the Incarnation have remained relatively unexplored—the nature of God as revealed in Jesus’ personal life and teachings, and Jesus’ continuing work in the world today as a living spirit presence.
The Greeks had discovered and developed the mind as the key to meaningful and virtuous living. Jesus supplemented this achievement with a revelation of the value and nature of personality—illuminating the personality of God. The religion of Jesus, a spiritual mode of being experienced during the process of interacting with other persons, must be engaged—experienced—in order to be known. It cannot be formulated as a doctrine.
In the religion of Jesus, the presence of God is discovered in the process of loving and serving others; we become one with God by merging our wills with his will. In partnership with God we become co-creators of reality itself. It is his will which is the teleological force directing universe evolution.
The religion of Jesus is a religion of dynamic participation rather than passive withdrawal from the world. As we learn selflessly to serve through love, we become more like the loving God who selflessly serves a universe of universes teeming with intelligent life.
His basic teachings constitute a revelation about the nature of the kingdom. In his ordination sermon he shares his personalist philosophy of living and its role in leading to the actualization of the spiritual kingdom on earth–encouraging his apostles to carry it forward. Note: Personalism is defined as “a doctrine emphasizing the significance, uniqueness, and inviolability of personality.” Jesus’ personal religion consisted of the whole-hearted doing of his Father’s will, expressed as service and the fruits of the spirit.
It is instructive to note that the fruits of the spirit are expressed and experienced in the context of relationships between persons. Jesus’ teachings, his life, and his philosophy place the locus of spirituality in human experience, the ground of being, within living relationships—our relationship with God and our relationships with each other. This revealed understanding of communal spirituality contrasts sharply with natural religions seeking to find God in subjective states of consciousness or a future state of existence.
Upon the personalist foundations illuminated by Jesus, The Urantia Book articulates a personalist cosmology—a vast network of relationships between persons and spiritual entities functioning over a wide range of reality levels, constituting the architecture of the universe, extending from the Paradise Trinity down to relationships in human families and into the heart of every living mortal. The adjutants of worship and wisdom which differentiate personal mind from animal mind are supporting pillars of Jesus’ personalist religion.
Spiritualized relationships between persons constitute the emerging architecture of the Supreme, the kingdom of heaven.
Reprinted from https://urantiabook.org/