The Play/Portrayal of Christ

Related Bible passages

• Galatians 3:1
• 2 Corinthians 5:16
• John 8:56
• John 1:13
• John 14:6

Related ideas

Pauls Autobiography

“Before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.” Do you know what “portray” means? I think we all know, but let me refresh your memory: “To depict in a drawing or painting; or in some verbal description; or as an action on a stage,” a play on the stage." "You were shown the whole thing like a play going on a stage tonight, and someone moved across the stage and they played the perfect play of God’s only salvation, the only way that man could be saved. And he walks across the stage and he plays it, and every scene he enacts is a mystical scene to be experienced by the individual. That was all done. Now are you going to confuse it? Can’t you now have that little spirit of observance and separate the action of walking across the stage from what he is trying to portray? For he is portraying it. If you go to a play and someone is shot, you know he will go home after being shot and have the most wonderful time - for their day begins at night. But you will weep, sitting in the audience, as you see him being shot, being abused. But he wasn’t shot and he wasn’t abused, save as an actor - but not the being who put on the mask, who played the part. So, let me repeat it: “Whose eye beheld Jesus Christ publicly portrayed as crucified.” The world thinks he was flesh and blood. No, he wasn’t flesh and blood. This is the fulfillment of all that was told in the Old Testament, but no one understood it, [except] the one to whom it was revealed (you call him Paul now). “When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood, and the Gospel that I preach to you is not man’s Gospel. I did not receive it from a man nor was I taught it but it was revealed by Jesus Christ.” The whole thing was revealed and I saw the mystery of it all, the mystery of salvation: that Christianity is based upon the affirmation that a series of events happened in which God revealed himself in action for the salvation of man. The thing happened, for the play said it did. I went to the play and I saw it and I was part of the gathering, and they hoped I would have the spirit of discernment to separate the action of the actor from what he was acting, and see the spirit, not the flesh. Did I see the spirit? Then after a while come the teachers, who did not participate, and they tell you he is flesh and blood. He was born of a certain woman, on a certain day, in a manner that you were born - only he didn’t have a physical father. And that isn’t true at all. This birth is something entirely different, as told us in the Book of John: “He is born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” An entirely different birth takes place, which is all explained as the play unfolds. You saw the spirit - but don’t go back, not to the flesh. Now the story begins. We are called the followers of “the Way.” Is that the way of salvation? I’ll believe it. I will wait patiently until it unfolds in me, for that is the way of salvation. Then in the 14th [chapter] of John, we are told: “And now you know the Way.” And Thomas said: “We do not know the way. We do not know where you are going so how do we know the way?” He said: “I am the way, and the truth and the light.” It is not a man, “follow me home.” All that you will see me do upon the stage, - that is the way - so, “I am the way.” He didn’t say I am this, that or the other - “I am the way.” You follow the whole thing - that spirit that moves before you and you will see the way of salvation. They still didn’t understand him. They said a way to what? A way to everything, but primarily “the Way to the Father.” “For no one comes to the Father but by me.” So, don’t look upon me as flesh and blood - “I am the way.” Follow my story through this series of events and you’ll come to the Father. So the state unfolds on the stage and they all see the spirit, but many could not discern and discriminate between the action of the actor and what the actor was portraying. We come back to Galatians: “Before whose eye Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.” There you see it. The whole thing is unfolding on a stage, but man cannot lose himself to the point where he gets beyond the action of an actor. And he cries and weeps with the actor. He’s portraying something, but they can’t get what he is portraying. Read the story of Jesus and don’t think of Jesus as flesh and blood. He is God himself, unfolding it before you in the form of a man that can see a man walking across the stage.

The life and crucifixion of Jesus Christ are not literal historical events of a flesh-and-blood man, but a divine 'play' or 'portrayal' of spiritual truths. These events are mystical scenes meant to be experienced internally by each individual as the path to salvation. The challenge is to discern the spiritual meaning from the literal action.

Read Pauls Autobiography on MyNevilleGoddard.com