Keeping the Commandments and Practicing the Truth
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| Keeping the Commandments and Practicing the Truth |
In practice, the commandments should be connected with the practice of the truth. While keeping the commandments, one ought to practice the truth. When practicing the truth, one should not violate the principles of the commandments or go against the commandments. Do that which God requires you to do. Keeping to the commandments and practicing the truth are interconnected, not contradictory. The more you practice the truth, the more you keep to the essence of the commandments. The more you practice the truth, the more you will understand God’s word as expressed in the commandments. Practicing the truth and keeping the commandments are not contradictory actions, but are rather interconnected. In the beginning, only after man keeps the commandments can he practice the truth and attain enlightenment from the Holy Spirit. But this is not the original intention of God. God requires you to worship God with heart, not to just practice good behavior. But you must keep the commandments at least superficially. Gradually, through experience, man gains a clearer understanding of God. He stops rebelling against and resisting God, and he stops calling God’s work into question. In this way man may abide by the essence of the commandments. Therefore, merely keeping the commandments without practicing the truth is ineffective and does not constitute real worship of God because you have not yet attained real stature. If you keep the commandments without the truth, this amounts to just keeping rigidly to the rules. In so doing, the commandments become your law, which will not help you grow in life. On the contrary, they will become your burden, and will bind you firmly like the law of the Old Testament, causing you to lose the presence of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, only by practicing the truth can you effectively keep the commandments. One keeps the commandments in order to practice the truth. You practice even more truths through keeping the commandments. You gain even more understanding of the practical meaning of the commandments through practicing the truth. The purpose and meaning of God’s imperative that man ought to keep to the commandments is not to follow ordinances as man may imagine, but rather has to do with man’s entry into life. The more you grow in life, the greater the degree to which you will be able to keep the commandments. Although the commandments are for man to keep, the essence of the commandments only becomes apparent through man’s life experience. Most people think keeping the commandments well means “everything is ready, all that remains is to be caught up.” This is an extravagant imagining and is not God’s will. Those who say such things do not wish to make progress and are greedy for the flesh. This is nonsense! This is not in keeping with reality! Only practicing the truth without keeping the commandments practically is not God’s will. This kind of person is disabled and proceeds as if hobbling on one leg. However, only keeping to the commandments and sticking rigidly to the commandments without having truth is, likewise, not fulfilling God’s will—like a man who sees from one eye only, this is also a form of disability. It can be said that if you keep the commandments well and gain a clear understanding of the practical God, then you will have truth. From a relative perspective, you will have gained real stature. You practice the truth and keep to the commandments at the same time without mutual conflict. Practicing the truth and keeping the commandments are two systems, both of which are integral parts of one’s life experience. One’s experience should comprise an integration of the keeping of the commandments with the practice of the truth, not a division. However, there are both differences and connections between these two things.
