A genuine love for Christ Jesus is a good start in following him. But we can’t stop there if we would experience the kingdom of heaven and all its harmony on earth. Christian Science deeply reveres the man, Jesus. But there is much more to be seen in his life. Its meaning is found in the eternal Christ that Jesus showed to be his true identity and the revealer of our true identity. This Christ is the manifestation of divine Love speaking to individual consciousness and expressed in individual experience. As the examples that follow show, there could be nothing more natural than feeling the Christ-love and expressing that love, our Christly nature, in daily life. We can be free from viewing others—or being viewed—with fear, distrust, or disdain.
One of the followers of Jesus who most clearly grasped this was Paul. He preached with startling certainty, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). In taking his message to the Gentiles, he said that it was God’s purpose to reveal “Christ in you” (Colossians 1:27). Paul knew, from profound experience, that there is nothing ethereal about our spiritual individuality, even as there is nothing dependable in a material basis of identity.
Paul made clear that it was the purpose of God, who “separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen.” Following that striking statement he said with impressive finality, “Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood” (Galatians 1:15, 16).
