The Great Gospel of John
Volume 3
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi
- Chapter 183 -
The reason for the incarnation of the Lord.
Philopold says, "In Your holiest name I will try then to see what I can unfold out of myself.
2
I reckon, if even an ordinary person must have a reason for any quite ordinary action, otherwise he would not have put his limbs into motion, all the more so can we assume that God, as the only eternal true and pure all-powerful spirit, must have had an extremely cogent reason to squeeze itself into the limited form of flesh and so as the Creator of all things become a fellow creation for His creatures, as we people are.
3
But as only love alone is the powerful incentive for whatever action for us people, likewise love was certainly also the single high motive for encouraging You, oh Lord, as the holy consequence of this, to walk among us and teach us to recognize Your will freely in us, to make it our own and then to act independently to please You, oh Lord.
4
This is how it seems to me in my heart quite naturally and actively: You once in eternity changed Your ideas into truly solid forms. At first the forms were rigid and stiff, as now everything which stands before us seems to be completely lifeless to our senses. From these great and seemingly dead forms You developed from time to time gradually more and softer and more self-aware forms of life with less or more free movement and action. All this is and was only a preparatory school and first test of fully free life in all the fully free people coming afterwards, to whom You, oh Lord, gave the main and fundamental form of Your own fundamental existence.
5
Now man was there, became aware of himself and of his divine freedom, had a great joy in his existence, in his beautiful form and could tell and count the things that were around him.
6
But soon he began to ask after his origin, likewise the things that had been given to serve him; and when You, oh Lord, saw that, You became joyful in Your divine heart, and You gave him the opportunity to feel You more and more and to think.
7
Through the inner silent and secret revelation in the heart of the now free man who was Your equal in everything, Your eternal spirit led him to begin to discover that he, along with everything around him, must be the work of an all-powerful and highly wise and good being. Through such an ever increasing and brightening recognition the new, magnificent man had to be filled not only with the highest respect and honor before the Creator of all things, whom he could feel ever more acutely, but also with a longing love for Him in his heart to see Him just once and speak to Him, in order to recognize with faithfulness that his great idea of the existence of such a high being, constantly awakening honor and love, was no vain fantasy!
8
This great longing rose and rose higher and higher, and the holy demand for You, oh Lord, in Your spirit, became warmer and warmer in the pure and still unspoilt breast of the first human couple.
9
True, these first people loved each other; but they did not recognize each other and therefore their love for You, oh Lord, united them, and created in them the ever increasing and more determined confidence that there must be a great, holy and all-powerful Creator who had set the people as lords over the whole Earth and over all the things, because all other creatures of the Earth bowed before their will.
10
When such a longing to get to know You personally had reached its highest culmination, You then were also awakened in Your godly heart and opened the inner eye of the people, created an ethereal human form for a moment and showed Yourself to the people longing for You.
11
Only then did man see the great and holiest truth and the fullest reality of his presentiment and had a great joy in You, but also a great fear of You who had given him, along with everything else, his existence.
12
At that time man was as good and pure as a sun; nothing dulled his senses, and what one calls passion was far from his sacred breast.
13
But You, oh Lord, knew well that only the human form was animated by the breath of Your will, and that he was now capable of beginning to work on his own inner formation, in order to achieve free independence.
14
You directed him and showed him the way - one, leading to divine, freest independence, and the other leading to the captive and therefore utterly dependent existence.
15
A commandment was the threatening pointer and the questionable double path itself.
16
But so that the commandment became what it should be for the new people, You had to give man a tempter, so that he would prompt him to disobey the commandment and man would then hold firmly to the commandment through his own firm will and would observe it faithfully.
17
This lasted for a while; but You Yourself saw that man could not finally reach that high level of complete independence which You had pinned out for him through the strict obedience of a commandment.
18
In order to achieve that, man had to be separated from You ever further and deeper; he had to fail and fall and then only begin to pull himself together again in such highest division from You with great effort and under all sorts of temptations and complaints, and then search for You with a humbled and purified heart.
19
When the fallen man had risen again to You by such a painful way out of his profound depth, You came to him again, showed Yourself to him once again in a much more extended form and likewise in a greater educational revelation to the people, and made the great prophecy of what You have now performed before our very eyes, that You too would become a fellow man for man, so that he could stand before You in complete independence for all future times and You would have the greater, more magnificent and certainly more blessed pleasure to face Your children not immediately as a God, Lord and Father spread through all eternity and therefore never to be seen and never to be touched, but instead as a visibly loving Father, whom the children can love, and to lead all the good children personally into Your wonderful heavens.
20
What a blessing could that be for a never-ending God, if He could see His dear children, but they could never see Him as anything but an endless sea of light?! In this way You have prepared the greatest blessing for the people and thereby as the true, only and most loving Father of Your children also for Yourself.
21
For what desire could You have even in the best and most pure of heart of all Your children in the certain knowledge that they will never see or hear You speak in all eternity?!
22
Thus You, oh Lord, have done all this for Your and the people's will, so that the pure can become happy in You and that You can enjoy the highest bliss and happiness in them!
23
And if now all the angels come down from heaven and can give me another reason for You present fully and even materially formal human existence, I will give up forever my humanity and will stop existing, or I will be an animal forever
24
If You, oh Lord, had no love in You, You would have never called any of Your most magnificent ideas into a visible and formal existence; but since You had a great pleasure in Your godly heart in Your wonderfully magnificent and great ideas and loved them before Your endless wisdom and power had ever called them into externally visible and formally secured beings through Your strength, Your love, which was also becoming more and more fervent and active, forced You to give Your ideas an existence apart from You and therefore also a continuing life.
25
This life, however, is nothing but Your highest, most powerful and purest divine love!
26
All creation breathes out their life and in this love of Yours, yes, their whole being is nothing but Your love, and all forms are also only Your love! Everything we hear, see, perceive, sense, feel and taste are only Your love! Without it a sun would never have lit the Earth and warmed its fields!
27
But if only Your love has done all that with Your magnificent original ideas, should it then do nothing for itself in order to achieve in all fullness what originally forced it to prepare a free, independent life for its ideas?!
28
I am now of the opinion that I have spoken the full truth, from which goes forth that You, God of eternity, inevitably had to become in time a person like us, driven by Yourself!
29
And I also believe, as far as is possible for my human wisdom, that I have exhausted the question that You gave me! I beg You, oh Lord, to now speak Your judgment on this quite clearly."