Paul in a remarkable way reveals his spiritual understanding of the incorporeal Christ and its relation to every man when he says in his first letter to the Corinthians (15:19–23): "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. ... For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming."

Christian Science declares that because Christ is Truth, it always operates as light, or enlightenment, and is the only thing that humanity needs in order to be saved. Christ is that which saves us from the Adam-dream, or the false sense of existence. Christ is the truth of being, and this reality of our being unfolds gradually as we grasp it, claim it, and accept the actual understanding of true being.

If Jesus had possessed exclusive knowledge of God, he could never have been the Saviour; but he knew that all that he knew was the possession of all men in their true being. He knew that the divine facts which constituted his spiritual selfhood were available to all. The facts are therefore just as much ours as they were his, and he expected us to demonstrate this. Referring to her revelation of the Christ, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, says in her book "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 164), "The Science of Christianity, that has appeared in the ripeness of time, reveals the incorporeal Christ; and this will continue to be seen more clearly until it be acknowledged, understood,—and the Saviour, which is Truth, be comprehended."

Christ is the nature of God revealed to us in such a way as to transform. The nature of God, reflected by man, transforms, redeems, and saves. The Christ is always the Saviour. Every right, every spiritual or true idea is the savior from some false material belief. Christ, therefore, becomes practical to us because it is the saving Truth. Its nature and its effect in delivering us from the belief that evil exists as a real entity, with place and power opposing God, are expressed in the words of Isaiah (42:8), "I am the Lord: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images," and (43: 11), "I, even I, am the Lord; and beside me there is no saviour." The truth indicated in these stirring verses operates specifically to save us from belief in the presence and reality of evil.

Many religions teach redemption and regeneration, but not from the standpoint of Christian Science. Our approach to redemption is from the standpoint of man's present and unfallen perfection as the image and likeness of God, man's true and forever spiritual being. Therefore, if one regards himself as a material person with faults and failings, struggling and hoping to be better, his premise is wrong at the very start, because he has already admitted the erroneous assumption that he is material. The spiritual understanding of man's true selfhood enables one to break the mesmeric suggestion that he is identified with a matter body, or with sin, disease, or evil in any form.

Mrs. Eddy makes this very clear in her statement in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, andMiscellany" where she says (p. 242): "You can never demonstrate spirituality until you declare yourself to be immortal and understand that you are so. Christian Science is absolute; it is neither behind the point of perfection nor advancing towards it; it is at this point and must be practised therefrom. Unless you fully perceive that you are the child of God, hence perfect, you have no Principle to demonstrate and no rule for its demonstration."

When the Christ-element appears in any human being, and of course it has done so to a greater or less extent through the ages, it is God's nature appearing. In a way, the whole purpose of one's study in Christian Science is to learn how to approximate the nature and character of Christ. Jesus pointed the way. He was called the Way-shower, and we must never lose sight of the fact that the way to individual redemption is a step-by-step process of overcoming the propensity to think materially, to criticize, to condemn. Man must be seen in his true, original, and unfallen being.

In Christian Science we see that the understanding of our true being and sonship is revealed as the spiritual man. Speaking of this, Mrs. Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 316), "The real man being linked by Science to his Maker, mortals need only turn from sin and lose sight of mortal selfhood to findChrist, the real man and his relation to God, and to recognize the divine sonship." And she continues: "Christ presents the indestructible man, whom Spirit creates, constitutes, and governs. Christ illustrates that blending with God, his divine Principle, which gives man dominion over all the earth."

Richard J. Davis