[Footnote A: Heb. ii:10, 11.]
[Footnote B: Lesson II, this treatise.]
Again at the resurrection of the Christ, according to the testimony of St. John, the Master said to Mary of Magdala: "Go to my brethren [the apostles] and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and your God" (St. John 20:17). Hence we have Jesus and the apostles with the same Father, the same God, and the fact of brotherhood proclaimed. If such relation exists between Jesus and the apostles, then it exists between Jesus and all men, since the apostles were men of like nature with other men. In his great discourse in Mars Hill, Paul not only declares that God "hath made of one blood all nations of men"—but he also quoted with approval the Greek poet Aratus, where the latter says: "For we are also his (God's) offspring;" and to this the apostle adds: "For as much, then, as we are the offspring of God [hence of the same race and nature], we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art after man's device."[A] Our own nature, one might add, in continuation of the apostle's reasoning, should teach those who recognize men as the offspring of God, better than to think of the Godhead as of gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art after man's device, since the nature of the offspring partakes of the nature of the parent; and our own nature teaches us that men are not as stocks and stones, though the latter be graven by art after the devices of men.
[Footnote A: Acts xvii:26-30.]
Paul might also have quoted the great Hebrew poet: "God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the Gods. * * * * I have said ye are Gods; and all of you are children of the Most High."[A]
[Footnote A: Psalms lxxxii:1, 6, 7.]
The matter is clear then, men and Gods are of the same race; Jesus is the Son of God, and so, too, are all men the offspring of God, and Jesus but the first born of many brethren. Eternal Intelligences are begotten of God, spirits; and hence are sons of God—a dignity that never leaves them. "Behold," said one of old, "now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is."[A]
[Footnote A: I John iii:2. I am not unmindful of the array of evidence that may be massed to prove that it is chiefly through adoption, through obedience to the Gospel of Christ, that man in the scripture is spoken of as being a son of God. But this does not weaken the evidence for the fact for which I am contending, viz., that man is by nature the son of God. He becomes alienated from his Father and the Father's kingdom through sin, through the transgression of the law of God; hence the need of adoption into the heavenly kingdom, and into son-ship with God. But though alienated from God through sin, man is nevertheless by nature the son of God.]
3. Jesus the First Born of Many Brethren: Sure it is that God, the Father, is the Father of the spirits of men. "We," says Paul, "have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits and live?" (Heb. 12:9).
According to this, then there is a "Father of Spirits." It follows, of course, that "spirits," have a father—they are begotten. It should be remarked that the term, "spirits" in the above passage cannot refer to self-existent, unbegotten intelligences of the revelations, considered in the foregoing lessons; and certainly this relationship of father to spirits is not one brought about in connection with generation of human life in this world. Paul makes a very sharp distinction between "Fathers of our flesh" and the "Father of spirits" in the above. Father to spirits is manifestly a relationship established independent of man's earth-existence; and, of course, is an existence which preceded earth-life, and where the uncreated Intelligences are begotten spirits. Hence, the phrase "shall we not be subject to the Father of spirits and live?"