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You have written earlier that the ultimate expression of natural law is Jesus Christ. He is Aristotle's ideal form of humanity shown to us in bodily form. Before the incarnation, the logos was more like a Platonic form in the heavenly realm. With the incarnation, Jesus represents the placement of that form in a particular individual on the earth. He is the example we are to follow. Not that a Christian will ever attain holy perfection, but it is only a Christian that has the ability to love out the ideal in any way or for any amount of time. The Holy Spirit represents the ideal form or natural law of mankind which existed in Jesus, and He lives in believers. He is what gives us the ability to approximate in any way the ideal example we have in Jesus Christ.

On the Beatitudes, I always considered that justification happened at the moment God fulfilled the subjects hungering and thirsting for righteousness. That is what happens at the moment of justification, we receive Christ's righteousness. It is only then that we can act righteous. I consider the Beatitudes before as God sovereignly bringing the subject to faith. If someone is poor in spirit, they are as good as justified because once God puts you on that path He will bring you to the end of it. However, the event doesn't occur until that filling. In being poor in spirit, mourning, meek, and hungering for righteousness you see a person responding to God's call to come to Him. He is drawing you to Himself. There is a good overlap with what Jesus says in John 6 about those who God has given to Him.

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