I Want to Be True, Part Four and Final

I believe it is here that George MacDonald gets into the "how" of it. How can a man/woman be true? See what he has to say.

When an individual is, with his whole nature, loving and willing the truth, he or she is then a live truth. This he has not originated in himself. He has seen it and striven for it, but not originated it.

The truth of every man, I say, is the perfected Christ in him. As Christ is the blossom of humanity, so the blossom of every man is the Christ perfected in him. The vital force of humanity working in him is Christ; He is his root--the generator and perfector of his individuality. The stronger the pure will of the man to be true, the freer and more active his choice, the more definite his individuality, even the more is the man and all that is his, Christ's. Without Him, he could not have truth, he could never have loved it, loving and desiring it, he could not have attained to it.

God gives us the willl wherewith to will, and the power to use it. But we, ourselves must will the truth, and for that the Lord is waiting. The work is his, but we must take our willing share. When the blossom breaks forth in us, the more it is ours, the more it is His. For the highest creation of the Father is the being that can like the Father and Son, of his own self will what is right. The groaning and travailing, the blossom and the joy, are the Father's and the Son's and ours. The will, the power of willing, may be created, but the willing is begotten. Because God wills first, man wills also.

When my being is consciously and willigly in the hands of him who called it to live and think and suffer and be glad--given back to him by a perfect obedience--I thenceforward breathe the breath, share the life of God himself. Then I am free, and in that I am true--which means one with the Father. And freedom knows itself to be freedom.

When a man is true, if he were in hell, he could not be miserable. He is right with himself, because right with Him from whom he came. To be right with God is to be right with the universe, one with the power, the love, the will of the mighty Father, the cherisher of joy, the Lord of laughter, whose are all glories, all hopes, who loves everything and hates nothing but selfishness, which he will not have in his kingdom.

Christ then is the Lord of life. His life is the light of men. The light mirrored in them changes them into the image of him, the Truth.

And thus the Truth, who is the Son, makes them free.

Fantastic, I say! What say you?