TRUE service lies in our obedience to the spiritual laws of God. It begins with our understanding that God, Spirit, is the only creator and that man is spiritual, wholly good, created by God in His own image and likeness. The assumption that man is partly spiritual and partly material, partly good and partly bad, is opposed to the truth of being set forth in the Bible. The pressing need of mankind to awaken to God's presence and power was clearly perceived by the prophets of the Old Testament. Again and again they admonished their people to turn from false gods and serve God, their true Maker. In the book of Joshua we read (24:14), "Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the Lord."
Jesus not only taught us man's wholly spiritual and perfect nature, but he gave us concrete proofs of his teaching by healing the sick and raising the dead, showing spiritual good to be the only reality, presence, and power. Have we met this need of a definite understanding of man's true being, and do we live accordingly? Then we are escaping the snares that serving the false master, mortal mind, would lead us into. This is a vital point to be considered. The ever-living words of our great Way-shower proclaim (Matt. 6:24): "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."
Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 182): "The demands of God appeal to thought only; but the claims of mortality, and what are termed laws of nature, appertain to matter. Which, then, are we to accept as legitimate and capable of producing the highest human good? We cannot obey both physiology and Spirit, for one absolutely destroys the other, and one or the other must be supreme in the affections. It is impossible to work from two standpoints. If we attempt it, we shall presently 'hold to the one, and despise the other.'"
The man of God's creating is naturally and spontaneously obedient to Him, expressing Him, knowing Him as All-in-all. This fundamental spiritual fact understood in its full sense brings to the seeker for truth liberation from error's false claims to existence and power. It is in the progressive demonstration of obedient service to the one and only God that one is lifted above sickness and other mortal discords into his God-bestowed spiritual freedom.
In our demonstration of true service the understanding of and wholehearted obedience to divine laws are requisite. Jesus pointed out two all-embracing spiritual laws or commandments when he said that we should love God with all our heart, with all our mind, and with all our soul, and should love our neighbor as ourselves. He said (Matt. 22:40), "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
How do we prove our love of God? Is it not by our acknowledging God as the creative and sustaining Principle of all existence and by our obeying with childlike trust and willingness His undeviating laws of harmony? When right reasoning and unselfish love rule our lives, we have ample proof that we are in conformity with divine grace, with the essence of God's love, which freely and impartially blesses all. We love our neighbor as ourselves by knowing that in reality all men are spiritual, created in the image and likeness of God. Jesus said (John 14:15), "If ye love me, keep my commandments."
The individual needs to demonstrate his acknowledgment and obedience to God in an orderly, consistent, and progressive way. He must start with humble victories over a sinful sense of self and progressively lead up to the final victory, to the full subordination to God's will. A mere intellectual grasping of truth cannot be substituted for the living spirit of Truth. The unfoldment of the Christly spirit comes step by step to human consciousness. One's experience can be likened to that of a diligent student of mathematics. Working at his mathematical problems from grade to grade, he finds satisfaction in his ability to solve these problems. He knows the folly of trying to skip most of the grades and then of attempting to work in higher mathematics.
The human sense progressively relinquishes its belief in evil and sees that error has no activity, that evil has never done anything; nor has it undone anything that God has done. Step by step the individual demonstrates the allness of the one Mind, its full blessing and full control. Increasingly he sees that obedience to God simultaneously brings forth God's law of provision and protection for the obedient; that one is never beyond divine Love's care; and that no material argument can prevent his sufficiency and safety in good.
More and more one must align himself with the Principle of his being by expressing and serving the one master. Mrs. Eddy writes (Science and Health, pp. 253, 254), "The divine demand, 'Be ye therefore perfect,' is scientific, and the human footsteps leading to perfection are indispensable." Our Leader also writes (ibid., p. 242), "In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error,—self-will, self-justification, and self-love,—which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death."
When we leave even our most cherished beliefs for the spiritual truth and when material arguments find no response in us any longer, we are proving our obedience to God and our ability to walk over the waves of mortality. He who overcomes the material claims of existence walks in spiritual freedom and harmony. Divine understanding is found leading the human sense out of the belief of any other ego besides God and revealing man's unity with God, as His spiritual offspring.
A student of Christian Science had been struggling for many months with a claim of internal injury. When the realization came to her that there was neither a hurt sense nor any condemnation in divine Love, all belief of anyone hurting or being hurt completely dissolved itself. An understanding of the truth that Love's changeless wholeness and goodness are continually reflected by man completely wiped out any sense of wrongness. The healing followed in a few weeks. This unfoldment, however, was not a mere intellectual grasping of truth. It was the culmination of the student's sincere seeking to serve God. A deep spiritual revelation of the divine reality completely changed the foundation of her former thinking. She saw clearly that the battle between matter and Spirit had to be fought at every point and the victory won through Spirit. Refusing to listen to material arguments, she acknowledged God as the only Life until she saw that in divine Love there are no material arguments.
Whom do I serve? is a question to be consistently answered by us in order that we may remain steadfast in our spiritual course onward and upward. When our thought is in accord with divine Mind, which knows only the unbreakable and ceaseless operation of the divine laws, then we have the correct answer.
