Saying 49: Jesus said, “Blessed are the whole ones and the chosen for you will find the Kingdom. For you are from it, and there you will return.”
Some translations of this saying use the terms “solitary” and “elect”, but I prefer William Duffy’s restored version based on a translation by Jean-Yves Leloup as it removes those references to separation and division and replaces them with terms that are more accurately reflective of the rest of the tone throughout Thomas’s Gospel.
Those who are “whole” and “chosen” are one and the same. All are chosen in Christ because all of us are in and of Christ. All are whole in Christ because it’s not possible to be in Christ and lack anything.
Now, of course, not everyone is aware of their chosen status in Christ. So, they tend to live and behave as if Christ is far from them. They may believe the lies often preached from the pulpit about their need to find Christ, or to ask Christ to come into their life, or in some other way seek and find Christ out there, somewhere, as an external being that dwells somewhere in Heaven or outside of our Space and Time.
Others are not aware of their wholeness, and so they live according to the illusion that they lack what they need for happiness, or to feel complete. The lie often spouted from those who cling to their Bibles is that they are unworthy, filthy, wretched sinners who require exceptional amounts of repair in order to – perhaps one day – become whole and complete in Christ.
Nothing could be further from the truth, however. We are all already one with Christ. We are all whole and complete in Christ. We require nothing to connect with Christ or to become One with Christ other than to silence the voices that suggest otherwise.
This is why it is so important for us to daily remind ourselves of these truths: that we are One with Christ, and that we are whole, and complete, and chosen in Christ before the foundation of the World itself.
Christ really is all and truly dwell in all. That includes you and it includes me, and it includes everyone who will ever live, or who has ever lived, or who lives now.
As Jesus says, we are already blessed because we are from the Kingdom and, inevitably, this is where we will return one day, either in this experience of reality, or in the next one.
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Keith Giles is the best-selling author of the Jesus Un series. He has appeared on CNN, USA Today, BuzzFeed, and John Fugelsang’s “Tell Me Everything.” His latest book, SOLA MYSTERIUM: Celebrating the Beautiful Uncertainty of Everything is available now on Amazon in paperback and on Kindle.
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