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Read John 17:1-26.
Jesus played a most important part in opening the way for mankind into the Father's kingdom. This was accomplished by His overcoming the belief in death.
Atonement means the reconciliation between God and men through Christ. Jesus became the way by which all who accept Him may "pass over" to the higher consciousness. We have atonement through Him.
"Christ... who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed."
The whole race was caught in the meshes of its own thought and, through drowsy ignorance, would have remained there had not a break been made in the structure, and the light of a higher way let in.
If you were held in the meshes of a great spider web, and someone made a hole through which you could pass, you would go where the hole was and would make your escape that way. Jesus made this aperture in the race thought and thus threw open wide the door into the spiritual realm.
His Christianity had a living God in it, a God that lived in Him and spoke through Him. It is a religion of life, as well as purity. Men are to be alive; not merely exist half dead for a few years and then go out with a sputter, like a tallow dip. Christ's men are to be lights that glow with a perpetual current from the one omnipresent energy.
Declaring my unity with this power, I affirm:
"The redeeming word of Jesus Christ, 'I am the resurrection, and the life,' makes me whole and perfect."
