John 1:17. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Christ.
Such is the law that had to be given to the first life: already to the first human being in the beginning, and in the course of events through Moses, who is also cited in this verse as a representative of the law. No one could ever attain true freedom of life through the law, since the law hinders life rather than furthering it.
Through a categorical ‘must’ arising from the immutable will of the primordial power, the first ideas of creation were brought forth into an isolated, seemingly independent being. Thus, as far as separation and formation are concerned—being limited by space and time—this was accomplished through an immutable ‘must’.
Now the being, the human, was there: within itself, in a sense, the Deity itself, or, what is one and the same thing, God’s primordial Being itself, only separated from its primordial ground, yet still conscious of it. At the same time, however, it remained bound within a limited form and held by an immutable ‘must’. This condition did not please the being thus established, and its feeling of greatness entered into a mighty struggle with its necessary limitation and its having been brought forth.
As the struggle grew ever fiercer in the very first order of beings, the great fundamental law had to be made stricter and the beings confined within a temporary, fixed judgment. This consisted in the formation of solid material heavenly bodies and the greater division of primordial beings thereby brought about.
In the second order of beings, the human then appears clothed in flesh, standing on the ground of his first judgment. Despite the now threefold separation from his primordial ground, he soon recognized it within himself again and became defiant, arrogant and disobedient to an easy law, given no longer as a ‘must’, but only as a ‘should’.
But because he would not accept this easy ‘should’, a more difficult one was given to him instead, backed by a severe penalty. When this second ‘should’ was disregarded, the penalty was duly carried out. (See the Flood and other events of this kind!)
After this discipline, the divine Being came to earth in Melchizedek and guided human beings. But they soon began to struggle again and had to be bound by new laws and brought into order, so that all that remained to them was a machine-like movement contrary to almost all their inclinations.
The law had thus established a wide gulf that no spirit and no being could any longer leap across. As a result, both the prospect and the inner awareness of an eternal continuance of the inner life, so greatly restricted in this way, were placed in serious doubt.
Faced with such a restriction, the divine primordial Being then appears in His own primordial fullness, in the person of Christ.
Here, then, the primordial grace returns, takes upon Itself all the weaknesses of human life, and gives human beings in exchange a new grace, a new life full of true light. In this life and through Itself, it shows them the true path and the true purpose of their being.
John 1:18. No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son, who is in the Father’s bosom, has made it known to us.
Only now did those who recognized Him gain true knowledge of God. For the first time they could behold God—whom no being had previously been able to behold in His fullness—beside them and outside them, and through Him also themselves and their own utterly free purpose in life.
And now the uncrossable gulf established by the law has also been removed again. Every human being could, and can now always, step out from under the yoke of the law by exchanging the old self for the new self from Christ. This is why it is also said that one should take off the old self and put on the new, or that whoever loves the old life will lose it, but whoever flees from it will receive it as a new life. This, then, is the proclamation from the Father’s bosom and the living Gospel of God.
The expression ‘who is in the Father’s bosom’ means this: God’s primordial wisdom, or the actual innermost divine Being, is at home in love, as light is at home in warmth. Light originally arises and springs from the mighty warmth of love and, through its existence, produces warmth again, which in turn continually brings forth light. In the same way, from love, which is equal to the Father and in the ground of the ground is the Father Himself, arises the light of divine wisdom. This light is like the Son, or is the actual Son Himself. Yet He and the One called Father are not two, but entirely one, just as light and warmth, or warmth and light, are one, since warmth continually produces light and light continually produces warmth.