In I John we read (3:1, 2): "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God. . . . Beloved, now are we the sons of God." Think what it means to be the sons of God now! The Scripture does not say that at some future time or through some process we shall become the sons of God but that this is our present state of being.
When we identify ourselves as mortals or believe that we have been born in matter of human parentage, we deny our divine sonship and disobey Christ Jesus' command to call no man our Father but God.
To achieve the understanding of our present status as the sons of God, we must establish our authority for such a conclusion. We find this authority in many statements in the Bible. In the book of Genesis we read (1:26), "God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."
Christian Science teaches that God being Spirit, His image and likeness must be spiritual. It is obvious that the mortal who appears to the material senses is not this likeness; therefore this false sense of man is not the son of God but is an illusion. Material man is a concept of mortal mind, which is never the truth of man but is always a lie about him, a misconception. The false concept of man is formed by the material senses, not by God. Without the material senses there would be no sense of a material or mortal man.
The deceptive testimony of the material senses is never valid, because it is a contradiction of the allness of God, Spirit. If we believe the testimony of the material senses, we are believing in a creator other than God and in a creation other than His, and we cannot understand our divine heritage as the sons of God.
Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 69), "Mortals can never understand God's creation while believing that man is a creator." Belief in human birth would subject us to the claims of mortal heredity; but the understanding of God as the only creator sets us free to prove the nothingness of the belief that disease, human characteristics, or false dispositional traits can be inherited.
All the false claims of the carnal mind are due to ignorance of God and of man's relationship to Him. But, according to Science, nothing is real that is not of God. We eliminate erroneous conditions through the knowledge of God and the recognition of the perfection of man as the son of God.
The writer at one time felt a gathering in one of her ears. In the process of trying to clean the ear, she injured it so that the hearing was greatly impaired, and other distressing symptoms appeared. She received Christian Science treatment, but the healing was not realized. As time passed she became accustomed to the condition in the ear, and only intermittently worked mentally on the problem.
After many months she realized that she was accepting a sense of herself as other than a son of God and thereby being disloyal to the teachings of the Bible and Christian Science. She determined to claim her divinely bestowed heritage of freedom from any imposition of mortal thinking, whether it claimed to be a physical condition or a mental error. She recognized that the condition was not physical and that what was needed was not the removal or restoration of matter, but the elimination of false thinking and the restoration of a clearer understanding of God and man.
The definition of "ears" in Science and Health includes the following (p. 585): "Not organs of the so-called corporeal senses, but spiritual understanding." The writer prayed to know wherein she was failing to understand spiritually. As she searched her thinking to learn in what way she was not acknowledging her heritage of perfection, she realized that she had been allowing herself to be extremely critical. She determined to conquer this besetting fault.
One evening, several weeks later, she became aware of hearing more distinctly than before. She was soon able to hear perfectly and has continued to hear in the years that have followed.
During the working out of this problem it was realized that impatience, intolerance, and a lack of gratitude had obstructed her clear understanding of her divine heritage, and as these false traits were replaced with the true qualities of man as the son of God, healing resulted. Evil was seen to be illusion, the counterfeit of good, which only the knowledge of God as All, as the only creator, could dissipate.
Paul wrote in his epistle to the Romans (8:16, 17), "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." No greater heritage could be bestowed upon us. Does this not verify our status as the sons of God?
The recognition of our divine status does not preclude the necessity of our demonstrating that status in our present experience. The inheritance is not a matter of words but of works. There is a call to recognize our true existence as the sons of God and to think, speak, and act as His sons, that is, to live sinlessly. As long as we believe and act as mortals, we are not demonstrating our heritage as joint heirs with Christ. There is an imperative demand made upon us to evidence our worthiness to be heirs.
To be joint heirs with Christ is to accept the Father's blessing in the words of the father to his elder son in Jesus' parable (Luke 15:31), "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine." In the understanding of the fatherhood of God comes the understanding of the divine sonship and of the kingdom of heaven within us.
It is impossible to gain an understanding of the truth in Christian Science if we begin with the premise of mortality. We are not working from mortality to immortality or from materiality to spirituality. Our spiritual status is the fact now and forever. The acknowledgment of this truth disposes of the erroneous claim to the contrary, because Truth destroys error.
The Christ, speaking to the human consciousness, is like the sunlight shining through the gloom. The sunlight has no consciousness of gloom or darkness, but as the sunlight permeates the darkness, the latter disappears. In the same way the human consciousness, when it becomes aware of the Christ, the divine nature, is illumined, and materiality proportionately disappears. To demonstrate the Christ-consciousness is to be a joint heir with Christ.
In "Miscellaneous Writings," Mrs. Eddy says (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."
Man's divine heritage as the son of God is not a promise, but is the present fact; it is one's true state of being.
The salvation of the righteous is of the Lord: he
is their strength in the time of trouble. And the
Lord shall help them, and deliver them: he shall
deliver them from the wicked, and save them,
because they trust in him.—Psalm 37:39, 40.
