Once, Jesus’s students came to a village and asked to be given a place to sleep, but they were not admitted.
Then the students went to Jesus and complained about this, saying, “We wish they would be struck dead by lightning for this.”
Jesus said, “You still have no understanding of who you are in spirit. I am not teaching you how to destroy people, but how to save them.”
Once, a man came to Jesus and said, “Command my brother to give me the inheritance.”
Jesus said to him, “No one has made me a judge for you, and I will not judge anyone. And you cannot judge anyone.”
Once, the orthodox brought a woman to Jesus and said:
“Look at this woman who was caught in prostitution. According to the law we are to beat her with rocks. What do you say?”
Jesus did not answer them, but waited for them to change their thinking.
But they persisted and asked him how he would sentence the woman.
Then he said, “Let whoever among you has never made any mistakes be the first to heave a stone at her.”
And he said nothing more.
Then the orthodox looked at themselves, reproached by their consciences, and the ones in front attempted to hide behind the ones in back, and they all left quickly. And Jesus was left alone with the woman.
He looked around and saw that nobody was left. “What,” he said to the woman, “is there no one here to condemn you?”
She said, “No one.”
He said, “And I cannot condemn you either. Go then, and from now on, do not sin.”
Beware the temptation against the fifth commandment, concerning how people consider themselves obligated only to do good to their fellow countrymen and consider other nations to be enemies.
One legalist wanted to tempt Jesus and said, “What should I do in order to receive true life?”
Jesus said, “You know. Love your father God and love your brother under your father God as well, no matter whose countryman he may be.”
And the legalist said, “It would be good if there were no distinction between nations, but how am I supposed to love the enemies of my nation?”
And Jesus said, “There once was a Jew. He was struck by tragedy: attacked, robbed and tossed to the side of the road. A Jewish priest happened by, took a look at the beaten man and continued past. A Jewish Levite happened by, took a look at the beaten man and continued past. A man from a foreign, enemy nation happened by next, a Samaritan. This Samaritan saw the Jew and did not think about the feelings of Samaritans toward Jews, and simply felt sorry for the beaten Jew. He washed him, bandaged his wounds, and took him to an inn on his donkey. He paid money to the innkeeper for him and promised to stop by and pay any additional fees for him.
“You should conduct yourself the same way with foreign nations, with those who consider you nothing, those who may attack you; then you will receive true life.”
Jesus said, “The world loves its own, but hates God’s. Therefore, the people of the world—priests, dogmatists, and rulers—will torment those who do the will of the father. And I will soon go to Jerusalem and they will torment and kill me, but my spirit cannot be killed, it will go on living.”
Having heard that Jesus would be tortured and killed in Jerusalem, Peter became distressed, took Jesus by the hand and said to him, “If that’s the case, then it would be better not to go to Jerusalem.”
Then Jesus said to Peter, “Do not say this. What you are saying, that is a temptation. If, for my sake, you are scared of torture and death, then that means that you are not thinking of the divine, of the spirit. You are thinking of what concerns man.”
And, having called together a group of people with his students, Jesus said, “Whoever wants to live according to my teaching, let him renounce mortal life and be ready for all possible suffering in the flesh, because whoever fears for his mortal life will destroy his true life, and whoever neglects his mortal life will preserve his true life.”
And they did not understand this. Then the old believers arrived and he explained to everyone what he meant by true life and awakening from death. The old believers said that after the death of the flesh there would be no more life.
They said, “How can everyone be resurrected from the dead? If everyone were resurrected, then those who were resurrected would have no room to live together. Now, we had seven brothers. The first took a wife and then died. The wife then married the second brother, and that one died, she married the third, and he died, and so on until the seventh. So, how can these seven brothers live together with one wife if they are all going to be resurrected?”
Jesus said to them, “You are either trying to confuse things intentionally, or you do not understand what the awakening of life consists of. People in this life take wives and husbands. Those who serve eternal life and awake from death do not take husbands or wives, because they can no longer die. They are united with the father.
“In your scriptures it is written that God said, ‘I am the God of Abraham and Jacob.’ And God said this when Abraham and Jacob had already died, in the people’s understanding. It would seem then that those who die, in people’s understanding, are living in God’s understanding. If God exists and he does not die, then those who are with God are always living. Awakening from death is life within the will of the father. For the father there is no time and therefore when you fulfill the father’s will, and align your will with him, you can also leave time and death behind.”
Having heard this, the orthodox were helpless to come up with anything that could force him into silence, so they united with the old believers and they all began to probe Jesus together.
And one of the orthodox said, “Teacher! In your opinion, what is the most important commandment in all of the law?”
The orthodox believed that Jesus would make a legal error in his answer.
But Jesus said, “The most important commandment is to love with all your soul the Lord under whose power we all live. The other arises from it: Love your neighbor, since that same Lord is within him. Everything that is written in all of your books can be found in this.”
And Jesus said further, “In your opinion, what is the Christ? What is he, somebody’s son?”
They said, “In our opinion, Christ is the son of David.”
Then he said to them, “How could David call Christ his Lord? Christ is not David’s son or anyone’s son, but Christ is that very Lord, the master of us all, whom we recognize within ourselves, as our life. Christ is the knowledge within us.”
And Jesus said, “Keep watch, beware of how the orthodox teachers leaven their words. Beware also the leavening of the old believers and the leavening of the government. But more than anything else, beware the leavening of the self-proclaimed orthodox, because within them is the greatest deception.”
And when the people understood what he was speaking of, he said, “Be very wary of the scribes—the self-proclaimed orthodox. Beware them because they have stepped into the position of the prophet who announces the will of God to the people. They have, of their own will, taken on themselves the authority to preach the will of God to the people. They preach words, but do nothing. And it happens that they only say, ‘Do this and do that,’ but there is nothing to do because they do not do anything good, all they do is talk. They tell you what you are not allowed to do. And they themselves do nothing. They only attempt to retain for themselves the authority of the teacher, and in order to do so they attempt to make a display: they get dressed up and make themselves impressive.
“So? You should know that no one ought to call themselves a teacher or pastor. The self-proclaimed orthodox call themselves teachers and by doing so they block you from entering the kingdom of heaven and do not enter it themselves, either. These orthodox teachers believe that one can be brought to God through external ordinances and oaths. And, like blind men, they do not see that the external is meaningless, that all things are within the soul of man. They perform the easiest, most superficial actions, but they neglect to perform what is necessary and most difficult: love, charity and truth.