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In evangelical Christian circles, people have had a born-again experience where they have asked Jesus into their hearts to take over their lives. In our Gnostic terminology, we would say that this is a person’s acknowledgement of the Christ, and an invitation that invites the Third Order of Powers—the pleroma of the Christ—to come into ourselves to correct the mistakes that we have gained through the memes of the culture that surround us and clutter up our souls. Now, I know this all sounds like funny talk. It’s a little different than how we normally speak of Jesus Christ in evangelical circles, but I hope that if you’ve been following Gnostic Insights for any period of time, or if you’ve read the book, A Simple Explanation of the Gnostic Gospel, that you will understand what I’m saying. All I’m saying is exactly what is said in Christian doctrine about asking Jesus to come into your heart. It’s just a deeper explanation of how the process works.

It is not necessary to understand all of the steps in the Gnostic Gospel, because the only thing you really need to know is that we come from the Father and we will return to the Father. Christ is the mechanism by which that is accomplished. The Bible puts it this way:

¹¹ For it is written:

“As I live, says the Lord,
Every knee shall bow to Me,
And every tongue shall confess to God.”

¹² So then each of us shall give account of himself to God. (Romans 14:10-12)

On the one hand, Christians acknowledge that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Yet, on the other hand, church doctrine says that only those people who, before death, have repented and invited Jesus into their hearts will be saved. And to them, being saved only refers to being saved from damnation, being saved from hell. I’m safe. But that is not really the goal of inviting the Christ to dwell in your heart. We Gnostics say that the purpose of asking the Christ in is to replace your flawed Second Order pleroma with your redeemed Third Order pleroma.

That is, you ask the Fullness of God to wipe away all of the misunderstandings, all of the doubts, all of the sin. Sin simply means straying from the path of virtue. When you invite the Christ in, you’re asking for the correcting algorithm of the Christ, we might say,  to remove confusion from your life so that you only operate out of truth and love rather than ego. Being saved by Christ means that every moment of your waking life, until the time that you pass away and move on from this life to the next, will be for the glory of God, in order to demonstrate God’s love to the world and this cosmos. Therefore, thinking that being saved from hell is the goal and stopping there, entirely misses the point of salvation. Going to church on Sunday mornings yet acting unloving the rest of the time is not what Jesus meant by salvation.

Salvation is meant to bring you back into alignment with the glory of God. Jesus is our exemplar of a blameless life. Jesus is the first of the Second Order Powers that came fully loaded with the Third Order of Powers. That’s why he’s called Jesus the Anointed. He walked with the trut