Karma in the Bible: Difference between revisions

The [[Saint Paul|apostle Paul]] makes clear what Jesus taught him and what he learned from life:

Since it is often not possible to reap all of our harvests in one lifetime, the law of karma is fulfilled through the corollary law of [[reincarnation]]. Reincarnation is God’s mercy that allows us to reap the harvest of our past sowings here on earth instead of consigning us prematurely to “heaven” or “hell,” when we are ready for neither and we still have things to do on earth.

The law of cause and effect and of free will is affirmed by Jesus over and over again in his parables to his own and in his warnings to the seed of the wicked. Our Lord speaks often of the day of judgment, which is the day of reckoning of every man’s karmic accounts as recorded in his own [[book of life]]. In Matthew 12:35–37 he lectures to the scribes and [[Pharisees]] on the law of cause and effect:

Jesus says that a man will be justified for his righteous and truthful words and condemned for his unrighteous and untruthful words. The Lord’s grace will save him only if he is obedient to the law of Love—“that ye love one another as I have loved you.”<ref>John 13:34; 15:12.</ref>

This law of Love is embodied in the first and great commandment that Jesus taught us:

Jesus said that “on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”<ref>Matt. 22:37, 39, 40.</ref> Truly, love is the fulfilling of the law of karma; and our obedience to Love’s calling is our greatest assurance that we will not continue to make negative karma, whose harvest we will surely reap.

In Matthew 25 Jesus illustrates that the final judgment is based on the karma of an active (positive) or an inactive (negative) Christianity. Here works of love (i.e., charity) are ''the'' key to salvation. The Lord promises to those who minister unto him even in the person of “one of the least of these my brethren”<ref>Matt. 25:40.</ref> that they shall inherit the kingdom, whereas to those who do not minister unto him for the very love of Christ in all people, he says:

The apostle Paul, in his exhortations to the stubborn Romans, confirms Jesus’ teaching on the wages of karma:

Paul teaches Christ’s doctrine of the rewards for labor when he writes to the church at Corinth:

Now, the author of Hebrews says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God;”<ref>Heb. 11:6.</ref> and Paul writes to the saints at Ephesus, “By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.”<ref>Eph. 2:8, 9.</ref> Here it is evident that good works alone do not satisfy the whole law of salvation. Yet without them we have no proof of our discipleship in Christ, called as we are by our Lord to be “doers of the Word and not hearers only.”<ref>James 1:22.</ref>

Revelation 21:7, 8 and 22:12–14 establish with a ring of finality Jesus’ teaching on karma. Dictating through [[John the Beloved|John the Revelator]], Jesus defines two paths—the path of the overcomers and their reward, and the path of the violators of God’s laws and their end in the “[[second death]],” which is the merciful cancelling out of the soul potential that has denied the incarnation of God within her temple:

For anyone to deny that the law of karma is in the New Testament, he would have to deny the full weight of all the verses cited. He would also have to deny the law and the prophets of the Old Testament, because Jesus, who is the author and finisher of our faith,<ref>Heb. 12:2.</ref> said he came not to destroy but to fulfill the law and the prophets.<ref>Matt. 5:17.</ref> The evidence is conclusive that the law of karma is inescapable in the Judeo-Christian tradition.