Unspoken Sermons · Chapter
Life explained
This chapter explores the nature of true life as eternal, divine life received from God through obedience and love.
What happens
This chapter explores the nature of true life as eternal, divine life received from God through obedience and love. It contrasts mere existence with the abundant life that comes from union with God's will, emphasizing that life is the only reality and that death is but a shadow. The chapter calls for a willed harmony between human and divine wills, culminating in the prayer 'Not my will, but thine be done.'
Themes in this chapter
God as Loving Father
The Father's love is described as a divine agony to give life to creatures, culminating in an infinite embrace for every child.
Faith and Obedience
Obedience is the joining of the eternal round; willing God's will makes one a partaker of the divine nature and a true son of God.
Inner Transformation and Perfection
True life is a growing reception of more life, leading to the loss of self in the glory of love and the expansion of being.
Characters to notice
- Jesus Christ
Reveals the love of God and gives divine life to creatures; the Son in whom the Father's love is shown.
- God the Father
The source of all life, the infinite Father whose love is beyond measure and who receives every child with an infinite embrace.
- The Child
Every child will look in the eyes of the Father and be received with infinite embrace.
Key passages
“The whole history is a divine agony to give divine life to creatures.”
All of history is God's painful effort to bestow eternal life on his creatures.
Highlights God's sacrificial love in seeking to impart life.
“Life is the only reality; what men call death is but a shadow—a word for that which cannot be—a negation, owing the very idea of itself to that which it would deny.”
Life alone is real; death is merely an illusion, a concept that depends on life for its meaning.
Affirms the primacy of life over death.
“When a man can and does entirely say, 'Not my will, but thine be done'—when he so wills the will of God as to do it, then is he one with God—one, as a true son with a true father.”
A person becomes one with God when they fully and actively choose God's will over their own, like a true child with a loving parent.
Summarizes the core of obedience and union with God.