That the Master was the Man Jesus surely none need doubt. By the man Jesus we mean perhaps more than at first appears. The very name is fraught with profound meanings for us. The name given Him in the Records was not His family name, but the name which represented His mission. We have a parallel case in Gautama having been named the Buddha because of his mission. The Master was called Jesus because He was the Saviour of the people from their sins, so that the name implied the mission. He had given to Him the name because He was in the spiritual state which it represented. He was to become the Saviour of the people because He was in a state of Redemption, both knowing and realizing the Redeemed Life. He was Jesus in Himself as well as in His mission.

The mission of many men and women has been greater and purer and nobler than they have been in themselves: with Jesus it was otherwise. He was what His mission represented. He knew from experience the life unto which He called the people, the life of the Redemption, the Redeemed Life. He became their Saviour when they followed that life; when they did not follow it, He could not save them.

That the following of Him was not meant personally, except that the personal life of the follower was influenced unto Redemption, may be gathered from several statements in the Records. There were many who were said to be attached to Him who followed Him whilst they thought He was going to found a new kingdom, all of whom failed at the last because their hopes were not realised. It was said that the immediate disciples of Jesus found others who were not recognized as disciples casting out evil in His name, and that they requested Him to command them to follow with them; but that Jesus replied, “They who be not against us are for us.”

Men and women have confused two distinct things, the personal form and the spiritual signification of the name. They have understood the term as personal and thus have missed its meaning. They have failed to discern that when the Master as the man Jesus invited men and women to follow Him, He was not asking for any personal attachment, but rather that they would follow the life implied in the name, the life which the Master beautifully illustrated. For the Redeemed Life made manifest by Him was that unto which He so earnestly counselled the people.

It has been one of the tragedies enacted in the history of the ages that the Records which purported to portray the Master as He was, should have so mispresented His portrait that, whilst He bears the name Jesus, He is not shown to embody the spiritual state which it signifies. He is made to eat flesh and drink wine, to encourage customs and habits barbarous and degrading, to give His name to a system represented by the Abattoirs and Shambles which speak of pain, suffering and anguish on the part of the Creatures, and inhumanity on the part of man.

That the writers of the Records did not know the meaning of the term Jesus is evident from the presentation; or if they did, then they purposely misrepresented the life of the Master. Whichever it was, they have misled the whole of the Western World, and done despite unto the Master whose life was pure in all its ways, profoundly compassionate unto all Souls, and universally pitiful and gentle unto all the Creatures.

As the name Jesus signified the state of His own life and the redemptive mission on which He had come, so Christ signified also a state of consciousness which the Master had, and His Divine Office of Interpreter of the Divine Love and Wisdom. He was Jesus Christ. It was neither a Christian name, as we designate the first name of anyone, nor a surname; it was a glorious state of inward Divine Realization which also fitted Him for the sublime mission. The term itself is significant. Just as Jesus meant that the Master was a Saviour of men, so Christ meant that He was the vehicle of the Logos, the ADONAI, the ever blessed Son of the Eternal ONE. The Christ was the Anointed ONE. To be anointed is to be Illumined from the Divine. To be illumined is to know the Divine through inward realization, to have the perfect consciousness of the Divine Presence dwelling within the Sanctuary of Being.

It was thus with the Master. He was Jesus Christ, the anointed or Illumined One from the Divine Kingdom. He was the vehicle of the Logos who is ever in the bosom of the FATHER-MOTHER, and who was with HIM and in HIM. He was therefore able to speak as one who knew the Divine Mystery of Being and who was in perfect harmony with the life and purpose of that Most Blessed ONE. His Saviourhood was crowned with Christhood. He was the Redeemer of men through making manifest the Redeemed Life that they might follow it. He was Christ or the Interpreter of the Divine Love and Wisdom, which He showed forth in the Teachings that He gave to the inner group of the disciples. As Jesus He made plain for all the life that was to be lived; as Christ He revealed the attainment of the Crown of Life as the outcome of the Redemption. As Jesus He taught men how to make their lives pure on all its planes; as Christ He taught Souls how to realise the Divine Love within themselves, and come into the beautiful consciousness of the Divine Presence within the Sanctuary of Being. As Jesus He called all unto the life of Self-denial and Self-sacrifice; as Christ He constrained Souls to give themselves in beautiful Abandonment to the Divine. The one was the Office of the Redeemer; the other was the Office of the Interpreter of the Divine. Both were divinely appointed; and both were Offices of the Cross.

Quotation from What is a Christian? (pp. 45-49) by John Todd Ferrier.
© The Order of the Cross

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