Christ Bears Our Sins

The outer man is the external word, which comes first. The inner man is then sent to animate and eventually give life to the outer man by fulfilling the word. And when the outer man hungers for the word of God, everything said in scripture concerning God’s plan of self-redemption fulfills itself in him. He doesn’t redeem someone else, as there is no one else. We are the gods who came down and God can only redeem himself by fulfilling scripture.

Now another lady shared this vision saying: “I am standing in the midst of an enormous crowd. Everyone around me is screaming, `He is crazy. He is mad. He is crazy. He is mad,’ over and over again. Walking quickly to discover who they are referring to, I see a man standing alone at the head of the crowd. Recognizing him as the man I love, I run to him and cry, `I love you, I love you.’

“Although the crowd surges upon him and beats him, I continue to express my love. Suddenly he places his hands upon my neck. I feel his thumbs press into my throat and feel as though I am going to die. Then the pressure is released. The man raises his hands, which become two white wings, which caress me with an indescribable love as I awake.”

That night this lady fulfilled the 40th, 48th, 51st, 52nd and 53rd [chapters] of Isaiah. I say to her without any doubt in my heart, that she is very near salvation. Everything in her wonderful vision was made visible. She was the man and the crowd. She sent herself through hell because she loves herself, just as you and I do. In Blake’s lovely song, “A Little Boy Lost”, he said:

“Nought loves another as itself, Nor venerates another so.

Nor is it possible to thought

A Greater than itself to know.”

How can thought know a thought greater than itself? How could you love another more than yourself? It is impossible, for there is no other.

Love is the being playing every part. Love is the crowd, the tempters, and the one abused. Feel distress, and you are abusing Christ by saying, I am distressed. Feel ashamed, limited, inadequate or afraid, and God is experiencing them all; for He is your awareness, believing himself to be ashamed, limited, inadequate, or afraid and dying in your sins.

Just as my friend heard the vision tell her to change the comma, for the statement should read: “Before Abraham, was I am,” here again we find that unless you believe your I am is the one you have worshiped on the outside, you die in your sins; for your I am was before Abraham.

It is Christ who bears all of your afflictions, your sorrows and diseases. There is no record of a man who took upon himself a terminal disease while the one he took it from was set free. The implication is there, for – bearing our afflictions and weakness – God has the power to set man free. But Christ is not someone external to yourself. The Universal Christ is a diffusion of an individuality. You say I am, I say I am. We are the same I am, who is Christ, who is God, who is Jehovah – for there is nothing but I am!

Christ, who is your very self, bears all of your afflictions, your weaknesses, and sins; but this is difficult for man to understand. Several years ago I gave a series of nineteen lectures in San Francisco, attended by a lady and her lawyer son. At the end of the series the lady questioned her son, saying: “Do you believe Neville?” And answering with his rational mind he said: “He sounds sincere. He may be sincerely wrong, but I’m sure he is sincere.”

At that time the son was living with his mother. Every night before retiring they would remind each other to put the law of identical harvest into practice. When I returned to San Francisco the next year I learned that this man had formed an organization which was in the process of building the largest and most modern co-op in the Bay Area, called the Comstock. This project was followed by building up the peninsula and now this gentleman is worth millions.

Both mother and son used the law to achieve their every goal, yet she admitted she did not understand what I meant when I said Christ suffers for her. Although she could tell me: “I have a toothache,” she couldn’t grasp the fact that she is her imagination and therefore the cause of the toothache as well as the wonderful co-op.