Day by day, Day by day,
Oh, Dear Lord,
Three things I pray.
To see thee more clearly,
Love thee more dearly,
Follow thee more nearly,
Day by day.
– John-Michael Tebelak (1949-1985) & Stephen Lawrence Schwartz from “Day by Day” (1970)
Preparing the materials for teachingsbyjesus.com is the hardest thing that I ever have done. Taking the Bar Exam over again at almost sixty years old was nothing compared to trying to puzzle out some of the radical new ideas that Jesus came to earth to teach us two thousand years ago! We must stipulate as a fact that Jesus is a consistent and coherent Being. And we further must accept it as a certain fact that despite the problem of those six decades of illiterates playing telephone with His words, and the two-step translations, and the obvious problem that we are dealing with four Biblical Gospels and not one, in the end there will be a single consistent and coherent Gospel message on every detail of His teachings. I have realized only in retrospect how naïve I was to assume that we were going to be able to discover Jesus’s original Gospel message now beneath all the religious distortions, so to find it there feels somewhat astounding. By wild guess, we might have as few as only ten percent of the public words that Jesus spoke still preserved. We cannot even imagine what glorious wonders might have come from His lips and been forgotten, and now they are forever lost. Even with the fact that there is a lot of duplication in the three synoptic Gospels, still those Gospels do vary a bit from one another. And of course, the Gospel of John is another kettle of petunias altogether.
And still with all of that, as you will see when eventually you can visit the website, Jesus’s words taken from the four Biblical Gospels do assemble into a remarkably detailed and consistent spiritual message. And to make that message easier to understand, we have broken it into eight core teachings. There likely are other significant points that can be ferreted out with more effort, but these eight do come together with surprising ease, and they build upon one another and create one set of teachings. Some of the things that Jesus says will astonish you. No more religions? No more rules-based sins? I have been so shaken by some of what I have found that I was allowed to check in with the Boss to confirm what I was learning, and He has confirmed it all. He was only surprised that I might need His confirmations. He thought His words had been perfectly clear, as indeed they are clear. But when I asked Him about one particular area, I found His answer in itself to be ambiguous. I think I must have framed my question wrong. I said, “So, what then is Your commandment, Lord?”
He said, “My child, what is it about love that you do not understand?”
And with that, my memory stops.
One of the problems with reading the Gospels is that those who heard Jesus speak were most likely to remember what they themselves thought was important. And that leaves out all sorts of connector events and surrounding details, the many things that people living in a given situation might take for granted, but that you or I, watching from a distance, might be very eager to know. For example, when I was doing basic afterlife research, one of the last things that I was able to confirm was that human bodies in the afterlife are solid! The newly dead who were communicating from there with their loved ones on earth assumed that their still-living loved ones would of course know that people are solid – Duh! So very few statements about what people’s astral bodies are like have survived in the afterlife literature.
And my problem in this case was that Jesus had replaced the whole Old Testament with God’s Law of Love quite early in His ministry. He thereby, we assume, had done away with the Ten Commandments as stated rules. And we know that He also had done away quite specifically with all judgment by God, and He even had sort-of done away with rules-based sins. He had replaced it all with something that He called “My Commandment.” So as best I could determine, now the only sin was to do or say or even to think something unloving. I wish I had said that directly to Jesus! Was it possible that “My Commandment” meant simply that?
Thomas keeps saying to me, “Stop being so literal!” My darling primary guide is much happier now. I gather that seekreality.com and teachingsbyjesus.com are a major part of what he and I have left to do in this lifetime, and with most of both websites well underway, he can relax a bit. He thinks my problem is primarily what he calls “Christian hangover.” People who were reared as Roman Christians can have trouble getting past that old habitual, religion-imposed need for rigid rules and limits. Thomas has referred me to Chapters 15 and 16 of the Biblical Book of John, where Jesus is preaching to His Apostles as He is about to go to the cross. But are those words meant for the rest of us as well? I wish I had thought to ask Jesus that question. I swear, the older I get, and the more steeped and drenched I become in these Gospel words, the less capable I feel of actually doing anything! But I took my Thomas’s suggestion, and I studied John 15-16 in particular. It starts with Jesus flat-out telling His elite team that “My Commandment” is that His Apostles will love one another as He has loved them. But is that also His Commandment to us all?
“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that a person will lay down his life for his friends” (JN 15:12-13). Jesus also talks about their need to remain connected to Him. “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit (JN 15:1-2).
My husband once had a hobby-vineyard. He made wine as an all-consuming hobby for years, so I am very familiar with that process. My goodness, if you ever want to have any spare time at all, never attempt to grow a twenty-acre hobby-vineyard!
And as Jesus says, if the Apostolic branches are to be fruitful, they must remain well connected to Him. “If you remain in Me, and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. Just as the Father has loved Me, I also have loved you; remain in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will remain in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and remain in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full” (JN 15 7-11). “This I command you, that you love one another” (JN 15:17). You know, I read this, and all I can think of is Jesus watching these men as they then went out into the world and spread His teachings, and one by one they died for His Word. Thinking of that brings tears to my eyes. How proud He must have been of them! How very much He must have loved them! As He said to them, “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you” (JN 15:18-19).
And now we come to the point of it all. As we move into Chapter 16 of the Gospel of John, Jesus says as much as He ever really does about sin. He even actually utters the word “sin.” “But now I am going to Him who sent Me; and none of you asks Me, ‘Where are You going?’ But because I have said these things to you, grief has filled your heart. But I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I am leaving; for if I do not leave, the Holy Spirit will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you. And He, when He comes, will convict the world regarding sin, and righteousness, and judgment: regarding sin, because they do not believe in Me; and regarding righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you no longer are going to see Me; and regarding judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them at the present time. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take from Mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; this is why I said that He takes from Mine and will disclose it to you (JN 16:5-15).
There is a bit more in Chapter 16 of John, but it is just comfort-words to the grieving Apostles. And I think we can assume that the word “Mine” refers to His teachings, which throughout the Gospels have been what mattered to Jesus. So, please work with me here! What do we make of this? What does Jesus mean by “My Commandment”?
Ah! Sweet Jesus has made me laugh out loud. And in the middle of the night! He has just said clearly, “They are Christians. Give them First Corinthians Thirteen.” And so I shall:
“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
“Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1Cor 13).
So I think now we can safely say that Jesus has made His point! It is clear from its placement in the Book of First Corinthians and from its very different language that this most famous of Paul’s letters is a channeled work. And Thomas has confirmed to me that it was channeled through Paul by Jesus. So this tender letter delivered through Paul is Jesus’s beautiful, final Word.
Humankind has grown beyond a need for religions. God in the person of Jesus the Christ has made that fact abundantly clear to us now. We are ready to live daily the teachings of Jesus in the twenty-first century, and in perfect intimate contact with God! Jesus is our Wayshower. He is our Elder Brother and our Dearest Friend. What should have begun two thousand years ago is ready at last to begin today.
Day by day, Day by day,
Oh, Dear Lord,
Three things I pray.
To see thee more clearly,
Love thee more dearly,
Follow thee more nearly,
Day by day.
– John-Michael Tebelak (1949-1985) & Stephen Lawrence Schwartz from “Day by Day” (1970)