Article July 19, 1924 Issue

"Our Father which art in heaven"

STANLEY M. SYDENHAM

Christ Jesus did not claim for himself as a child of God anything that he did not claim for all the children of God. When he used the phrase "our Father," it is obvious from the context that he did not mean that God was the Father of one but not of another. In this instance, as in every instance, he was turning thought away from the contemplation of material selfhood as the reality of man to the spiritual reality of all things. The term "our Father" signifies that God is the Father of all that exists in the spiritual, real realm. Realizing, as Jesus did, that there is one God and one Father of all, his thought was never dimmed by the acceptance of a belief in the supposed reality of material existence or of material parentage. So clear was he as to the fatherhood and motherhood of God that at the age of twelve he rebuked those who sought him, with the words, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" It is thus very significant that the first recorded utterance of Jesus was his acknowledgment of sonship with God.

The Jews sought to kill Jesus because he claimed that "God was his Father, making himself equal with God." Christ Jesus said definitely, "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven." It is just as necessary scientifically to deny material conception and birth as it is to deny decay and death. Under the marginal heading "Individual permanency," on page 258 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy writes, "Never born and never dying, it were impossible for man, under the government of God in eternal Science, to fall from his high estate."

It is believed by many that Jesus' relationship to God was different from the relationship of others to the Father. This belief is based largely on the Biblical reference to the "only begotten Son," interpreting the "only begotten Son" to be the human Jesus. In Science and Health (p. 482) Mrs. Eddy says plainly, "Jesus was the highest human concept of the perfect man." The human Jesus was not the "only begotten" of the Father. Jesus never claimed this for himself. And to-day, the reason why many people do not feel that the promise of Christ Jesus, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also," applies to them, is that their concept of Jesus is incorrect and their own relationship to God not understood.

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