Joel S. Goldsmith The Government of Eden: Spiritual Principles for Living in Peace
Kindle loc 493 of 3198

When Are We Under God’s Government?

Remember that “the man of flesh cannot please God” and cannot be under God’s government. Who is the man of flesh? The man who lives by the human code of Moses: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” or seeking to live by the sword, or seeking to invoke human weapons instead of spiritual armor, which is the word of God.

“But ye are children of God.” When? When you “bless your enemies, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you. Then ye are the children of your Father, which is in heaven.” That’s all there is to this. It’s a matter of law or grace. “Choose ye this day whom you will serve”: to live under the law, or to live under grace.

Watch the Sermon on the Mount. It is a guide to two ways of living. You can choose the one you like best: the law or grace. If you choose the law, you will temporarily have a little easier time of it because you will be conforming to common usage; you’ll be going right along with the crowd, right in the swim.

On the other hand, if you attempt to live by grace, you will find yourself out of step with this world. You will find yourself peculiar; you’ll find yourself sometimes taking losses that you’re not entitled to; you’ll find yourself sometimes suffering from injustices that you don’t deserve. It doesn’t deny that for a minute here. In fact, it encourages you to do those very things, because, in the end, you’ll find you’re under God’s grace, God’s government, God’s protection. God’s will is being done in you, not the will of man. That’s an entirely different life.

Right here and now, I accept the grace of God. I accept the grace of God as the allness and onlyness and perfection of my being, of my body, of my business. I accept God’s grace as companionship, as home, as opportunity, as success. I accept, consciously, the grace of God as a law unto my being—as the only law, the only law operating in my mind, in my consciousness, in my heart, in my life, in my soul, in my being, in my body, in all that concerns me. I consciously accept God as the one influence in my life. I accept the activity of the Christ, the spirit of Soul. I accept the love of God as the only love in my experience. I consciously reject any love which is not of God. I consciously reject every love which is not of God, every law which is not of God, every belief which is not of God, anything and everything of a material and a mental nature which is not of God. And in doing this, I open myself to receive divine grace in consciousness, to accept the government of God in place of the government of matter and material beliefs and mental beliefs, mortal beliefs and theories, and superstitions.

Why should I be under the subject of where the stars are in the sky? Why should I be under the superstitions of a church? Why should I be under the superstitions of astrology or theology? Why should I even be under the superstitions of natural law? Why not, in my inner consciousness, realize,

God’s government is supreme, and it operates through grace. And I, here and now, accept the grace of God.

Now having done this once, thoroughly and completely, we have at least made room within ourselves to remind ourselves every time that there is the appearance of something contrary to that. We again remind ourselves that it’s the grace of God that governs me, not material law, not mental law, and we remind ourselves that spiritual power emanates from within my being and flows out from me to my affairs.

Therefore, nothing in the outer realm can act upon me, whether it’s the stars in the sky or the bombs in the sky. “Nothing from without can enter that defileth or maketh a lie,” but all good flows out from me, through me, to me and all who are within range of my consciousness.

That is an activity of truth in consciousness that we must practice, and we must practice it continuously until one beautiful day comes along when all of a sudden, something happens within, and when it does, you say, “Oh, just think! That was all true. Heretofore I’ve declared it, but now I know it.” There’s a difference between declaring it and knowing it. Once it is known, you no more have to declare it than you would walk around declaring your name or declaring that 2 x 2 is 4, or declaring that your money is in your right-hand pocket. You don’t have to declare anything once you know it. I mean by that, know it with this inner conviction that is called “spiritual discernment,” and that comes in that second of transition when the Christ takes over, announces itself, reveals itself as being on the field and in possession of all of your being and body and business.

You will be surprised at the change that takes place in your life once you have, shall we say, reasoned this through, or worked and practiced with it until you have come to an actual conviction that God is Spirit, that God is invisible, and that the law of God must be a spiritual law, and that this must be the all-power. You see, from the moment that you can even intellectually agree that this must be truth, from that moment on, changes begin to appear, but much more so when, through holding to this truth, maintaining this truth in your consciousness, abiding in it and letting it abide in you, you eventually come to that point of conviction, that point in which you say, “Ah, before I was blind, but now I see. Before, I may have intellectually agreed, but now I spiritually know and discern: God is Spirit.” Therefore, the government of this universe, the government of your individual life, the government of your collective life must be spiritual.

You can watch this work out even in your politics, where, if you will not put your faith in the candidates whom you vote for, and if you will not put your faith in the parties they represent, even while fulfilling your human obligation of choosing the candidate you believe to be best fitted, and casting your vote according to your highest sense of right—even while doing this—if you will realize that the real government that is to come through these men is spiritual; the real government is upon His shoulder, the Christ. The real dominion of this world is the dominion of God, not the domination of men, but the dominion of God.

Actually, it would make no difference if we elected the wrong candidates—if there is such a thing as right ones or wrong ones—if, in doing so, we at the same time realized, “I’m not putting my hope, faith, or confidence in you but in the divine government which will operate in you and through you.”

In other words, I accept God as the only power; I accept God as the only lawgiver, the only government, and that’s spiritual. Then I can trust God to exercise His judgment through the mind or consciousness of individual man. And that destroys the power of the human mind and human thought. It deprives an individual of the power to misapply his office.

It is when we look to “man whose breath is in his nostrils” and believe, “You are my salvation. I’m looking to you to run this country or this state or this city,” or, “I am expecting the principles of your party to save us”—only then are you subject to the domination of man. But if you can look behind this scene and acknowledge God, but acknowledge God as omnipotent, acknowledge God as law and lawgiver, acknowledge God as Spirit and God’s law as spiritual, and the government on His shoulder, you will have men first governed by God, and then our government governed by men who are governed by God.