This is part 7 of a series; The Selves is part 1.

When you make choices, you do so with a particular goal in mind; I’m choosing this so that I can get that. This is better because it will avoid that. And so on. And so at the end of the day, all your choices truly come down to what does your soul want… and how badly does it want it?

Yes, your heart pushes for things; your spirit pushes for other things; but every decision has to have at least token approval from your soul. And the decision, even the decision not to make one, and just let the heart or spirit do whatever they want, is still the soul’s decision.

And that means your soul ultimately decides every action, every word you say, based on what is most important to it. Based on what it wants.

When the heart says to the soul, “but if we do the right thing, our family will hate us”, the soul that loves being a part of a family more than it loves the truth will make the wrong choice.

If the spirit says, “we shouldn’t worship that other god”, and your soul says “but he promises more and asks less of me than the God of the Bible!” then again… the soul will make the wrong choice.

And yet… is it really the wrong choice if it leads to what the soul wants?

See, we tend to judge all souls by the things God says souls should want, but what if all your soul truly wants is to eat, drink, and be merry with its heart?

Ecclesiastes 8:15 Then I commended mirth, because a man has no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be joyful…

What if the soul… really doesn’t want to struggle down the straight and narrow; are its choices really the wrong choices… for it?

Proverbs 21:10 The soul of the wicked desires evil; his neighbour finds no mercy in his eyes.

Sure, they’re the wrong choices to be a part of God’s Kingdom. But if they hate God’s Kingdom… the choices they made are exactly the choices they should be making! For “…they have chosen their own ways, and their soul delights in their abominations” (Isaiah 66:3).

If a person just wants to be part of a happy family right now, and never feel alone for even a moment, then they shouldn’t follow the true Jesus. If that is what you truly want, then true Christianity is the wrong choice (Matthew 10:35).

YOU GET WHAT YOU WANT

Because that’s the great secret: ultimately, we all get what we truly want. You may not believe that, but think about it; you’ve no doubt said something like “I want to learn a foreign language”, or “I want to play the piano” or “I want to get married” or “I want to be a better person”.

But as time passes, you make choices; for even refusing to take action is an action, and refusing to make a choice is a choice. So you watch TV instead of practicing the piano; you go to bed instead of going on a date; you go to a bar instead of studying French.

You made these choices based on what you truly wanted. Because if you truly wanted to learn French, you’d have made the time. And Jesus makes it clear: if you had truly want to be a better person, you’ll find a way – no matter what it costs.

Matthew 13:44-46 …the Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found, and hid. In his joy, he goes and sells all that he has, and buys that field. Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a man who is a merchant seeking fine pearls, who having found one pearl of great price, he went and sold all that he had, and bought it.

If you truly want something, absolutely nothing will get in your way. Not your possessions, not your family, certainly not your own lethargy. And if something does get in your way, it simply means that you truly wanted that other thing more!

Because remember, YOU is your whole self, including your heart, soul, and spirit – and so yes, your soul wanted to learn French… but your heart wanted to sleep more than the soul wanted French so that’s what the whole YOU did!

So as I said, you get want you want, because every choice you make is based on what you truly want! And that’s not wrong! Because this is not about objective right and wrong; this is about right or wrong for you. Because “the right thing” always depends on your goal.

Is your goal to have six-pack abs? Then hit the gym more often. Is your goal to hang with friends? Then do that instead. There is no “right” answer, but these different choices can lead to very different futures for you! Which one you REALLY want is what you will end up getting!

Proverbs 21:25 The desire of the sluggard kills him, for his hands refuse to labour.

It’s not wrong to love idleness and sleep; but it does lead to death. If dying doesn’t make you happy, then, maybe you wanted the wrong thing in the first place?

Proverbs 19:15 Slothfulness casts into a deep sleep. The idle soul shall suffer hunger.

Again, being idle is not a wrong choice. Unless you don’t like being hungry – in which case it is wrong for you. And if you make that choice anyway… it’s still not wrong. You’re just pursuing what you truly wanted – which is idleness in the present even at the cost of hunger in the future.

Proverbs 13:19 (GWV) To get one’s desire is sweet to the soul, but to give up evil is disgusting to the foolish.

So if you really want to become an Olympic-class figure skater, every single decision you make must be in service of that goal. You must wake up in the morning thinking about the ice, and go to bed at night only when your soul realizes that there is nothing else that can be done tonight to get you closer to that goal without borrowing from tomorrow.

There is literally nothing you cannot accomplish if your soul prioritizes it this way. Unfortunately though, what most of us really meant was “I want to learn to play the piano, but not more than I like watching reruns of ER.” “I wish I could be a better person but that’s effort.”

Thus, your choices will show you, and the world, and of course God, what means the most to you.

HOW WAS JESUS PERFECT?

In the last lesson you learned that Jesus had once been God, but had emptied Himself of His divinity to become fully human to prove to all of us that our natures can be ruled perfectly, that our heart can become unselfish, and our spirit can be purified to hold only truth.

But we left unaddressed the question of how was that possible? If Jesus really was exactly like us in every way, HOW was He able to keep the law perfectly when none of us ever could? If He didn’t have some sort of an advantage over us, then how could He have done what no one else ever did?

It seems so impossible, that the only way many people can get around it is by concluding He was never truly human in the first place. That He did not truly “come in the flesh”, that He did not in fact have human nature – and this belief, as you learned last time, is the doctrine of Antichrist.

And yet the question itself is fair: how did He do it? What are the odds that He alone, of all the billions of humans who ever lived, managed to live a perfect life unless He had some secret weapon we don’t have?

Remember, this can’t be something He learned as an adult, it had to be something that the baby Jesus knew when He refrained from stealing His brother’s milk and avoided sinning for the very first time! It boggles the mind, because which of us could have been expected to do such a thing?

It seems, in the literal sense of the word, incredible. And yet it must be true. So what was different about Him? How did He keep the 1-2-10 law perfectly, in every aspect, in every sense? This is literally one of the hardest of all questions, and we’re finally ready to give a real answer to it!

GETTING WHAT YOU WANT

Remember, His heart wanted the same thing your heart wants. Like yours, His spirit was full of more-or-less good statutes it learned from His good-but-not-perfect family and friends. But His soul was different, because He was HIM and not you or me!

Our soul makes us who we are. Strip away the soul, and we become a vegetable. Put our soul into a spirit body, and we’d be like the angels. If you and I swap bodies like they do on sci-fi shows, our souls would be the only thing that moves.

Which means we’d be the same people – except we’d have an unaccustomed beast and spirit that each other’s soul left behind, which might change us a bit because we’d be a different Self – for the Self is the result of the interactions of all three fractions!

Nonetheless, the most important part of any person, our soul’s desires, its judgments, would be the same. Otherwise, what are we?

Thus Jesus’ soul was what made Him Jesus. His body and spirit, like yours, had an effect on His Self, but the soul was the identity of the Self, and that came from heaven (John 3:13).

Which means Jesus was different from us – but not in the way antichrist thinks. Satan, the first Antichrist, never claimed that no soul could keep God’s laws. Obviously, God Himself did all the time!

Thus the challenge was never that God’s soul couldn’t keep the law. The challenge was that God’s soul couldn’t keep the law from inside a body of flesh with an unbroken spirit and a selfish heart!

So that’s exactly what the heavenly Jesus did; He ceased to exist as an Elohim and let the Father attach Jesus’ soul onto the egg in Mary’s womb, and in that moment became in all points like unto His brethren.

But His soul didn’t change. What He wanted, as a soul, wasn’t altered – otherwise, He would have ceased to be Himself! And so how did Jesus keep the law? Simple. He did what His soul wanted to do:

Hebrews 1:8-9 But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever. The sceptre of uprightness is the sceptre of your Kingdom. You have loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows.”

Jesus kept the commandments because His soul loved righteousness more than His brethren… more than us! And what did His soul love? David, prophesying of Jesus, answers for Him: “My soul has observed your testimonies. I love them exceedingly”(Psalms 119:167).

And again, “I am a stranger on the earth. Don’t hide your commandments from me. My soul is consumed with longing for your ordinances at all times” (Psalms 119:20). So short answer to a short question… why was Jesus able to be righteous when all of us failed?

Psalms 119:92-94 Unless your law had been my delight, I would have perished in my affliction. I will never forget your precepts, for with them, you have revived me. I am yours. Save me, for I have sought your precepts.

We get what we want. Always.

WHAT WE DIDN’T WANT

So can we really call “foul” if what our soul wants is to please its heart with short-term selfish goals, and what Jesus wanted was to keep the Golden Rule?

How is it unfair if Jesus wanted more than literally anything to keep the Golden Rule, which leads to life, and then found life…

…and we wanted to sit on the mental couch while our heart and spirit made choices for us, which eventually leads to death?

Proverbs 16:25 There is a way which seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.

Because both your soul and Jesus’ soul got exactly what they wanted, and exactly what the choices you both made inevitably led to. That’s actually the definition of fair! Now if you don’t like the end result of that choice… then want something else!

Every man who ever lived has failed to please God, at least at first… but not because the test was unreasonable! Not because we couldn’t have pleased God. But because we just didn’t really want to all that much! If we had, we’d have done it!

Of course, it’s easy to say “I love truth more than anything!” – But God expects us to prove it. He must be absolutely convinced that our soul wants righteousness and truth more than anything, so He locked our soul into a body with a selfish heart and an unbroken spirit to challenge us.

Our task, if we truly do love the truth, is to convince the heart and spirit one point at a time, persuading them that your soul’s desire will lead to what they most desire. That loving the truth is not only what your soul wants, but what they want too.

Isaiah 26:8-9 (BBE) We have been waiting for you, O Lord; the desire of our soul is for the memory of your name. In the night the desire of my soul has been for you; early will my spirit be searching for you…

God has promised that you will always get what you truly want… and if your soul truly wants to keep the Golden Rule, the heart and spirit and all the devils combined will not be able to topple it off the throne God set for it.

Romans 8:38-39 (KJV) For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And if we show God that we love His way of life more than anything else, He will make sure we find a way to get it – “For he satisfies the longing soul. He fills the hungry soul with good” (Psalms 107:9).

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

This truth should give you hope. Looking at your inward selves and realizing how hard it will be to change them is daunting; before, you may have looked at the perfect example of Christ and said, “well sure, HE did it, but HE was Jesus; HE was God” – but that was the spirit of Antichrist talking.

Yes, He did it – but He was no different from you. Yes, He overcame, but not because He had been alive for eternity – He remembered none of that. Not because He had no inherent lust, but simply because He loved the law more than you!

That is one leg up He had over us; but not because it was unfair, but because that’s who He is. And yet… what we want, what we love, that can change. It can change when we’ve acquired what our soul thought it would love, and realized that we were lied to… and that we actually hate that!

And that should give you hope that yes, you really CAN obey God; for Jesus was at no time endowed with special powers we cannot have, or given anything beyond our own comprehension. He simply believed God, loved the Golden Rule and the laws that come from it, and obeyed God, which is all you or I have to do.

Our life, from earliest childhood, is a succession of choices. Some children hear music for the first time and think “Wow! I have to learn how to create that”, and so they spend their lives making choices in pursuit of that goal.

Some children hear about astronomy and then can’t talk about anything else for decades; some find that sort of clarity through dance, or poetry, or farming, or karate. But by far the majority of us drift about from one wish to the next, one passing fad to another, hoping that this next hobby, this next girlfriend, this next book will bring us the meaning our soul knows our life is lacking.

But when the baby Jesus first heard the law, sitting in His mother’s lap at synagogue perhaps, His soul would certainly have thought “Yeah! That’s what I want!” and made every choice in His life based on that desire… just as you did for your own soul’s deepest desire!

Matthew 7:8For everyone who asks receives. He who seeks finds. To him who knocks it will be opened.

Which is just Jesus’ way of saying… you get what you want.

Continue to Part 8: The Devil You Don't Know