Jesus is the great standard-bearer of Truth for all mankind. Throughout his earthly career he lifted on high the banner of spiritual thinking and acting and demonstrated the nature of true manhood. He is the Way-shower for all men, leading the way out of the flesh into the pure atmosphere of Spirit, where man is found to be the son of God.

Jesus never claimed that he was God. He rebuked a man who referred to him as "Good Master" with these words (Matt. 19:17): "Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God." He referred to God as his Father and our Father.

Born of a virgin, Jesus inherited a material body from his mother. His pure, sinless mentality he inherited from God, Spirit. It was the sinless nature of his consciousness, expressed in everything that he said and did, which earned for him the title of the Christ, or the Anointed. This very title, the Anointed, indicates that Jesus was not God, but was endowed or imbued with the very nature of God.

In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy defines "Christ" as, "The divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error" (p. 583). This divine manifestation, or Christ, was demonstrated in the daily life of the master Christian. It destroyed the false beliefs of life in matter, and this destruction was evidenced in the healing of the sick and sinful, in the dissolving of human discords, in improved human conditions, and in the resurrection of the dead.

Christian Science teaches that the Christ, the divine manifestation of God, is the divine influence, ever present in consciousness, enabling the individual to overcome all fleshly ills and rise to the understanding and demonstration of his true identity as a son of God. The Apostle Paul, recognizing man's divine sonship and inheritance, writes (Rom. 8:16, 17): "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ."

Jesus differed from other men in that he had no human father. His birth, however, was not miraculous. In Christian Science it is explained that the Virgin Mary's consciousness was imbued with the Christlike nature; she communed consciously with God and thus gained a clearer sense of His fatherhood.

In the Gospels, Jesus refers to his human selfhood as the Son of man—Mary's son. But he also refers to himself as the Son of God, but not as God. It is true that he said (John 10:30), "I and my Father are one," and he also said that he was in the Father, and the Father in him. Oneness indicates unity, not absorption. To be one with an individual means to be in agreement with him—not to be him.

It would be impossible for God to be in that which He creates. But the creator and creation can be one in the nature or qualities of true being. Since God is good, His creation must be good; hence God and His creation are one in respect to goodness.

Because God is Spirit, His creation is spiritual and hence is one with Him in the qualities of His being. And since God is Truth, Life, and Love, His creation must express unity or oneness with Him in the qualities of righteousness, eternal life, and unselfed love.

Jesus was completely at one with the Father in that he reflected Him in all of the qualities of His being. And we abide in God in the measure that we demonstrate in daily living the nature and essence of the Christ, which made Jesus the spiritually anointed Son of God.

In an enlightening and inspiring address in Chicago, Mrs. Eddy said of Jesus (Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 103, 104): "Even while his personality was on earth and in anguish, his individual being, the Christ, was at rest in the eternal harmony. His unseen individuality. so superior to that which was seen, was not subject to the temptations of the flesh, to laws material, to death, or the grave. Formed and governed by God, this individuality was safe in the substance of Soul, the substance of Spirit,—yea, the substance of God, the one inclusive good." Christian Science reveals that as sons of God we all have perfect spiritual individuality, which dwells now and eternally in the atmosphere of Spirit, in the realm of divine Mind.

Jesus came to establish peace on earth and good will among men. He could not have done this without the Christ, his pure spiritual nature. His mission was to show men that his perfect expression of God-anointed manhood was not a divine dispensation to him alone, but the true inheritance of every individual throughout time and eternity. Only as we follow in daily living the Christ, the divine ideal, whom Jesus presented and demonstrated, shall we enjoy the fruitage of his statement (John 10:10), "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."

At this Christmas season all Christian Scientists may indeed pause to give gratitude for the more abundant life which has come to them through the teaching and the example of our great Way-shower, Christ Jesus, the God-anointed man.

Harold Molter