The Great Gospel of John
Volume 6
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
At the Sea of Galilee (John 6)
- Chapter 163 -
The fate of suicide victims. Teaching without setting a good example is not useful for anything. Faith without action is dead.
After the meal an elder of the so called Jew-Greeks stood up and said to Me: "Lord, while we ate I have thought a lot about it, how one should not love the bodily life, but rather despise and flee it, to thereby attain and maintain the life of the soul! This is now quite clear to me; nevertheless there is still one point which does not make real sense to me. There exist people who are true arch enemies of their own life, and if they for one or another reason become tired of it, they take their own life. They then should above all attain the life of the soul! - What is Your opinion about this?"
2
Said I: "Has God given them the bodily life so that they can destroy it?! The life of the body is the means given by God to man through which he should and must attain the life for the soul forever. Now, if he however, destroys the means prematurely, with what will he then maintain the life of the soul and actually attain it in the first place? If a weaver destroys his loom, how will he then weave his canvas on it? I say it to you: The suicides - if they are not insane - will with great difficulty or not at all possess the kingdom of the everlasting life! Since who has become such an enemy of his own life, in him is no love of life; but a life without love is no life, but death. - Do you now know how to understand this?"
3
Said the Jew-Greek: "Yes, Lord and Master, now I am in the clear and this will become a main part of Your teaching, which cannot be preached to the people enough!"
4
Said I: "Very well, - but above all, the preacher himself must completely be in order before he teaches somebody else; otherwise the teaching is hollow and also leaves the student hollow. If somebody himself is a keen follower of that what he teaches, also his disciples will eagerly endeavour to become as perfect as there is perfect their master. If however the disciples soon discover here and there gaps and imperfections, they will soon decrease their zeal and finally say: 'The master is a blunderer, - what should become fo us?!' And I say to you: The disciples will soon turn their backs on such a master; since bungling belongs to the common craft and never to the sphere of arts and even less so to the sphere of wisdom. Therefore you must yourself in everything be perfect, which means with regard to the teaching and the actions accordingly, otherwise you will not be able to become true spreaders of My gospel.
5
(An example:) Say somewhere there still exists an old hero school wherein the strongest and most courageous people trained as war heros. The master would especially lay on their hearts to disdain death and say that a coward person who fears death, never can become a true hero. However, when it then comes to push, where the hero master has to show his disciples how to approach death cold-bloodedly, but himself would hesitate and finally even flee, - would that inflame his hero disciples to true courage? Surely not; since the disciples will think: 'Oh, he just want to talk us by well chosen words into defiance of death; indeed, he is hundred times more afraid of death than even the most timid among us! He rather should open a school for cowards than for heros!'
6
The hero master will effectuate something entirely different, if he, in front of his disciples, takes up a fight with a lion and defeats him through his strength and skill. His disciples will then admire him and in themselves animate the growing desire, also be able to fight such a battle. And the proverb always stays true, that only the spirit of the deed enlivens, however, the dead letter of the word kills. Since what itself is dead, cannot enliven, but only the spirit, who reveals itself by the living deed, makes everything alive.
7
I say to you: Not those will enter the kingdom of God who will say to Me: 'Lord, Lord!', but only those who will do the recognized will of My Father in heaven! It is not enough that somebody believes that I am Christ, the anointed of God, but he also must do what I have taught, otherwise his faith is of no use to him; since without works the strongest faith is dead and does not give to any soul the everlasting life. - This remember all well and do accordingly, and you shall live!"
8
After this My teaching nobody asked Me anything further; since they all had enough to think about and to discuss among each other.