"BELOVED, now are we the sons of God" (I John 3:2). What an arresting statement this is! What power and freedom are ours when we accept and realize the truth contained therein! Christian Science has come to this age to reveal the nature of God and of man, made in His image and likeness.
Christ Jesus, whose words and works Christian Science explains, identified himself as the Son of God, but he also said to the multitude (Matt. 23:9), "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven."
Mary Baker Eddy makes many statements in her writings with regard to the perfection of man, God's son. But she always makes it clear that it is the real man, created in the image of God, to whom she refers and not the mortal, cognized by the material senses. She also points out that the man of God's creating, the only man there actually is, is always present.
On page 302 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," after referring to man's eternal identity, Mrs. Eddy writes, "Continuing our definition of man, let us remember that harmonious and immortal man has existed forever, and is always beyond and above the mortal illusion of any life, substance, and intelligence as existent in matter."
Even in the face of any seeming contradiction, we can know that man's unity with God is established now and forever. As we realize that there is no future in divine reality, we begin to lose our fear of a human concept of future. We see that at a time which material sense would claim to be farther along in our experience, we shall in our true selfhood be the same perfect image of God that we are even now.
By the same token, we can claim for a so-called past the same perfection that we know is ours now. A verse from Ecclesiastes states (3:15), "That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past." Man has always been God's reflection. Right now we are His likeness, and moreover we always shall be.
There was never a time when man was sick; there was never a time when man was sinful; there was never a time when man was destitute. But mortal mind, the supposititious opposite of God, divine Mind, would try to reverse this truth and deprive one of the fullness of demonstration.
When the belief in a disease has been destroyed and healing takes place, mortal mind may attempt to keep reminding one of what has seemed to exist in the past. If he is not alert, he may be faced with the fear of what might happen in the future and be forced to work out the same problem again.
A student of Christian Science found that after she had been healed of a longstanding physical difficulty, she was still plagued with the belief that there had been a time when she was not free. Finally, after a great deal of prayerful work, she saw clearly that since there had never been a time when she was actually an inharmonious mortal, she could never be one in the future. In fact, she was dwelling in the eternal, perfect now as the child of God's creating. As a result, her fear of the future was destroyed.
In this age of seeming potential destruction, how reassuring the thought that the now of God's creation, man and the universe, is established, acknowledged, understood, and demonstrated through Science!
The understanding of the nowness of perfection also meets the belief that it is too late. Oftentimes one is tempted to believe that he is too old to be of use or to be healed. Man's perfect estate was not in some past time only, when mortal mind claimed that one was younger or stronger or more alert. Perfection is right now, just as it ever has been.
Mortal mind may claim that one has had an ailment too long, that if only one had caught it in time, something might have been done about it. With what assurance we can say with the Apostle Paul (II Cor. 6:2), "Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation."
"Now" covers all the period that mortal mind claims to have usurped, that period that would seem to have been taken up with illness, lack, and so on. Time is never an element to strengthen a false claim, for time actually has never existed. Right where mortal mind claims time to have been, the eternal now was and is.
The perfection of man is not something God brings about at certain intervals. Rather, it is a truth that is established in the eternal now.
John witnessed the perfect state of being while in exile on the island of Patmos. Mrs. Eddy, in commenting on his vision, says in Science and Health (p. 573): "Accompanying this scientific consciousness was another revelation, even the declaration from heaven, supreme harmony, that God, the divine Principle of harmony, is ever with men, and they are His people. Thus man was no longer regarded as a miserable sinner, but as the blessed child of God."
Farther along in the same paragraph our Leader says, "This is Scriptural authority for concluding that such a recognition of being is, and has been, possible to men in this present state of existence,—that we can become conscious, here and now, of a cessation of death, sorrow, and pain."
How grateful we can be that the good of God's giving is not something that we are to receive in the future or that we may have lost in the past! It is ours now and forever.
