Participating in Christ With Our Bodies
Hi Friends,
Here is a short and simple message from Lowell Fillmore about our body as “the temple of the living God.” The message is clear: by lifting up our body we help unify it with our true spiritual nature, thereby making it “fit for God’s occupancy.” That may seem simple, but it’s much more than we think. Here’s why.
Last week was Pentecost Sunday, when Holy Spirit descends, unifying our entire Being — Spirit, soul and body — bringing our life into a greater expression of human divinity. This week is Trinity Sunday, when we lift up our bodies, allowing our body to ascend into full participation with Spirit and soul, making way in us a more perfect expression of human divinity.
Did you get that? When Holy Spirit descends, our bodies are lifted up. Why is that? The key is the Spirit-soul-body formula, found in First Thessalonians 5:23: “May your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” This formula of spirit, soul and body, as an inner expression of the external (transcendent) Trinity, is the foundation for our claim that Metaphysical Christianity is an authentic and distinct expression of the historic Christian faith.
We share with mainstream Christianity a belief in the external Trinity of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But most of mainstream Christianity does not embrace the inner Trinity of Spirit-Soul-Body, even though it is well grounded in Scripture.
This leaves mainstream Christianity unable to explain how one person, Jesus Christ, can be both fully divine and fully human. Mainstream Christians often struggle with this "christological problem" of Jesus several ways. They often portray Jesus as an unnaturally existent spiritual being, void of doubt, hunger and passion, exceptionally incarnated for redemption of sin. This is known in Paul's writings as the "spirit-flesh" problem. Others portray Jesus as a highly evolved, but only human, ethical teacher, one who is interesting, inspiring, and well intentioned, but now dead and gone. That is little more than "message-flesh." Others dodge the issue by pronouncing it all a mystery. Sadly, many walk away.
What we do is to declare, as did declare all Christianity in the first 300 years, Christ as the Logos, the eternal Word of God, God's expression of perfect Being in the higher dimension, incarnated as Jesus to make way for the bodies of all people being raised up and transformed into a more perfect expression of humanity.
But we, as Metaphysical Christians, go one step further. We declare that Christ as Logos, has not only entered into Jesus, but also has entered into us, as Spirit, bonding with soul, the seat of our passion, transforming and unifying superconscious, conscious and subconscious mind, allowing Spirit access to our body, forming a perfect union of divinity and humanity as Spirit in soul and body, restoring humankind to it's rightful place in God's providence.
We, as Metaphysical Christians, participate with Jesus, our way-shower as part of the second person of the Trinity. This is nothing more than Charles Fillmore’s understanding of “Christ in you, our hope of glory.” And it was laid out by him 100 years ago in his Statement of Faith. Click here to learn more about Charles Fillmore's Statement of Faith. Click here to order a Fillmore Statement of Faith postcard.
Because of our Spirit-Soul-Body forumula, we are not “low christology” but rather we are “high anthropology.” Further, our Pentecost is not a one-time event we wait for. It is, as M.H. McKean wrote, a Perpetual Pentecost.
The Father-Son-Holy Spirit forumula is a creed. The Spirit-Soul-Body formula is a spiritual practice. We do not declare Jesus Christ as a part of the Trinity so much as we participate with Christ in the Trinity.
By participating with Spirit, the body is made whole, becoming, not a body of flesh, but a body of spirit. We put into practice the advice of Lowell Fillmore: “Bless your body and dedicate it to God’s service each day, realizing that the vitalizing life of the Spirit of God is pulsating through every atom and fiber of it, healing, cleansing, and making it perfect.”
Have you ever noticed how many times the apostle Paul uses the phrase “in Christ” and “in the Spirit”? There are 73 occurrences in Paul’s authentic letters. New Testament scholarship in the past 50 years have referred to this as “participation in Christ”.
Scholars are discovering what Charles Fillmore found over 100 years ago—that we are not “made righteous” by confession but by participation — by aligning our bodies with Spirit. We “bless our bodies and dedicate it to God’s service each day.” This discovery has come to be known as the New Perspective on Paul.
This "new perspective" on Paul’s call for participation in Christ is not new. But it is something that hasn’t yet moved out of the mainline Christian seminaries into the denominational churches. Most mainstream Christians do not see or understand what it means to “participate in Christ”. But those in the Fillmore tradition of Metaphysical Christianity have been practicing it with their bodies for over 130 years. Mainstream Christianity is catching on. We should lead the way.
Trinity Sunday, May 26, 2024
Your and Your Body
by Lowell Fillmore
REMEMBER that your body is “a temple of the living God.” Because this is true you have the great responsibility of keeping it in order, clean, pure, beautiful, and holy, and in every way fit for God’s occupancy.
It is interesting to note that when you keep your body fit for God you are also keeping it fit for your own use and enjoyment. One who believes that enjoyment comes as a result of indulging his sense appetites very often makes his body unfit for God to dwell in, and in thus treating his body he also makes it unfit for his own soul to live in.
Your body is a very necessary member of the trinity that makes up your being. You would not be a complete being without a body. You are spirit, soul, and body, three parts or expressions of the divine-man idea, in one. These three must become unified in order that you may become a perfect expression of God’s ideal man. By lifting up your body, seeing it as Spirit substance instead of matter, you help to unify it with your true spiritual nature. By lifting up your opinion of your body you aid it to attain its divine inheritance. You will thus gain an understanding of the true peace, joy, and dominion that is yours as a son of God.
Your body is dependent upon Spirit for its life, intelligence, and substance, and the further it is separated from the Spirit by your materialistic ideas concerning it the less will it manifest life, intelligence, and substance. The farther you sit from the reading lamp in your home the less light you will have to read by. When you feel that your body is something apart from God, it enjoys but dimly the radiating light of Spirit.
Your body is more than flesh, blood, and bone. It is an expression of divine ideas of life, substance, and intelligence. If your body did not have intelligence it could not repair cuts in its skin and knit together its broken bones. If it did not have intelligence it would not know how to grow from a little child into a man or woman. If it did not have intelligence it could not operate the wonderful laboratory that digests its food and turns it into flesh, blood, bone, hair, fingernails, energy, brains, and other useful things that you need. Without intelligence it could not keep your heart beating and your blood circulating even while you sleep.
Your body receives vitalizing instructions from Spirit, but it accepts your personal suggestions also. When you tell it that it is tired it believes you. You do not have to say, “Body, you are tired,” in so many words, but the very thought that you have in the back of your mind, the idea that your body is material and subject to weariness, means that you are making that suggestion to it.
Nearly all of us do suggest to our body every day that it is growing older and that it is subject to decay and disease. Some people are suggesting to their hearts that they are weak. Some are suggesting to their brains that they cannot remember things. In the Apocryphal New Testament we read (in III Hermas 5:58, 59): “Keep this thy body clean and pure, that the Spirit which shall dwell in it may bear witness unto it, and be judged to have been with thee. Also take heed that it be not instilled into thy mind that this body perishes.” This is good advice, and even though it is in the Apocrypha and not in one of the canonical books of the Bible, it was no doubt written by a person of insight, for it harmonizes with Truth.
If there is an organ or function in your body that seems to be below par, lift up your thoughts concerning it. By lifting up your thoughts I mean dedicating this organ or function to the Christ perfection. This will tend to restore it to its original perfection.
Back of your body is the perfect, ideal body created in the image and likeness of God. By lifting up your thoughts about your body in praise and thanksgiving and realizing that it is indeed a spiritual body you will help to bring it into its true estate. The Scriptures say:
“There is a spirit in man,
And the breath of the Almighty giveth them understanding.”
Bless your body and dedicate it to God’s service each day, realizing that the vitalizing life of the Spirit of God is pulsating through every atom and fiber of it, healing, cleansing, and making it perfect. Realize also that God is your life, strength, and substance, and that no material conditions can harm God’s substance. When your body is lifted up in consciousness to its rightful place it will be filled with light and healing. Co-operate with the forces of spiritual life and intelligence by setting your body free from your worry thoughts about it.
“Ye are gods,
And all of you sons of the Most High.”
