LESSON 318. In me salvation's means and end are one.
(1) In me, God's holy Son, are reconciled all parts of Heaven's plan to save the world. What could conflict, when all the parts have but one purpose and one aim? How could there be a single part that stands alone, or one of more or less importance than the rest? I am the means by which God's Son is saved, because salvation's purpose is to find the sinlessness that God has placed in me. I was created as the thing I seek. I am the goal the world is searching for. I am God's Son, His one eternal Love. I am salvation's means and end as well.
(2) <Let me today, my Father, take the role You offer me in Your request that I accept Atonement for myself. For thus does what is thereby reconciled in me become as surely reconciled to You.>
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Below, is from Kenneth Wapnick's commentaries on this lesson, from "Journey Through the Workbook of A Course in Miracles," which can be purchased at the following site: ~ M. Street.
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LESSON 318. "In me salvation's means and end are one."
This title recalls the lovely statement at the end of Lesson 302: "He the End we seek, and He the Means by which we go to Him." In that lesson, God is both the Means and End. In this lesson, <we> are the means and end -- the end is God's Son as Christ, and the means of reaching Him is God's Son's choosing to forgive himself.
(1:1) "In me, God's holy Son, are reconciled all parts of Heaven's plan to save the world."
Traditional Christian theology has taught that the Son of God -- Jesus -- was the one who reconciled sinful man to God's Love. Thus Jesus takes the same idea and applies it to God's Son in all of us. This Son is not the magical figure named Jesus Christ who came into the world to atone for our sin through his suffering and sacrificial death. Rather, it is God's Son -- again, <all of us> -- who reconciles God's Son to himself. This means that <we> undo the belief in sin, the prerequisite to realizing our oneness with God.
(1:2-3) "What could conflict, when all the parts have but one purpose and one aim? How could there be a single part that stands alone, or one of more or less importance than the rest?"
The <parts> refer to the seeming fragments of the Sonship. Elsewhere in the Course, refers to these as <aspects> (e.g.,T-13.VI.6:4). The value of using neutral terms such as <parts> or <aspects> is that it emphasizes that God's Son is not only homo sapiens, for every separated fragment -- animate or inanimate -- is a fragmentary shadow of the one sleeping Son. Each part of the Sonship shares one purpose and goal, which marks the end of separation's specialness. As you go through your day, therefore, try to see how often you take sides and judge the parts of God's Son as better or worse or less important, more or less spiritual. And then ask Jesus to help you see the inherent sameness in God's one Son.
(1:4-8) "I am the means by which God's Son is saved, because salvation's purpose is to find the sinlessness that God has placed in me. I was created as the thing I seek. I am the goal the world is searching for. I am God's Son, His one eternal Love. I am salvation's means and end as well."
The <end> is to realize I am God's Son as Christ, and the <means> of attainment is to see God's Son in everyone, including myself, recognizing our single purpose and goal. Seeing at last that we share one Self. Thus, I <am> God's Son, and I <seek> God's Son.
(2:1) "Let me today, my Father, take the role You offer me in Your request that I accept Atonement for myself."
Strictly speaking, it is not God Who makes this request, but Jesus or the Holy Spirit -- our Teachers of forgiveness.
(2:2) "For thus does what is thereby reconciled in me become as surely reconciled to You."
We become one through forgiveness, the meaning of <reconciled>: one as God's separated Son, one as Christ, at one with His Source.
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10. What Is the Last Judgment?
Christ's Second Coming gives the Son of God this gift: to hear the Voice for God proclaim that what is false is false, and what is true has never changed. And this the judgment is in which perception ends. At first you see a world that has accepted this as true, projected from a now corrected mind. And with this holy sight, perception gives a silent blessing and then disappears, its goal accomplished and its mission done.
The final judgment on the world contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness. There it was born, and there it ends as well. And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless.
You who believed that God's Last Judgment would condemn the world to hell along with you, accept this holy truth: God's Judgment is the gift of the Correction He bestowed on all your errors, freeing you from them, and all effects they ever seemed to have. To fear God's saving grace is but to fear complete release from suffering, return to peace, security and happiness, and union with your own Identity.
God's Final Judgment is as merciful as every step in His appointed plan to bless His Son, and call him to return to the eternal peace He shares with him. Be not afraid of love. For it alone can heal all sorrow, wipe away all tears, and gently waken from his dream of pain the Son whom God acknowledges as His. Be not afraid of this. Salvation asks you give it welcome. And the world awaits your glad acceptance, which will set it free.
This is God's Final Judgment: "You are still My holy Son, forever innocent, forever loving and forever loved, as limitless as your Creator, and completely changeless and forever pure. Therefore awaken and return to Me. I am your Father and you are My Son.
