Each one of us, in his human experience, has the glorious privilege of assuming responsibility for his own spiritual welfare and progress. But before we can undertake this responsibility or before we can go forward, there must be a willingness to think more spiritually. We must be willing to let the kingdom of God function within us. One dictionary definition of "function" reads, in part, "the natural, proper, or characteristic action of anything." Then we might say that to let the kingdom of God function within us is to let the spiritual nature, which is the only true nature of man, be demonstrated; that is, brought into actual experience.
Now, in order that we may behold the real nature of man, we must utterly abandon the false concept of man which implies that we are mortals. Our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, tells us in her book "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 185): "Self-renunciation of all that constitutes a so-called material man, and the acknowledgment and achievement of his spiritual identity as the child of God, is Science that opens the very flood-gates of heaven; whence good flows into every avenue of being, cleansing mortals of all uncleanness, destroying all suffering, and demonstrating the true image and likeness. There is no other way under heaven whereby we can be saved, and man be clothed with might, majesty, and immortality."
The teachings of Christian Science clearly show that a mere acknowledgment of our spiritual status as a child of God is not sufficient to bring forth the actual evidence of man's immortal being. We must achieve through spiritual understanding our inseparable unity with the Father as His idea, and we must demonstrate this unity. It is thus that the sinless, birthless, deathless man of God's creating appears. We must be willing to awaken from the delusion that we are separated from God and that we live in a material body. Renouncing "all that constitutes a so-called material man" compels us to lay down fleshliness for spirituality and to cease thinking of ourselves in terms of matter. Isaiah said (2:22), "Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?" Centuries later the Apostle Paul proclaimed the fact (I Cor. 15:50), "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God."
