AGENTS OF KINGDOM LIFE

 
God came in human flesh as Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus Christ comes in you and in us by the indwelling Holy Spirit. We are not just followers of Christ but expressions of Christ - manifestations actually, as Ben, Jill, Sarah and Dave. As disciples we are not just followers of Jesus. We, by the Spirit are the expression of His Person. That is if we pursue truth because it is life. Jesus was and is resolute.
 
PUMPKIN DISCERNMENT
 
We can lie dormant as truth-tellers. Firstly, because we may not perceive truth. Secondly because we do not value truth over our own ideas and that of vested interests. But mainly because we rely on pseudo-grace – the kind of grace that does not see, does not speak up and equates a dormant tongue with Christ-likeness.  This is a kind of grace that is a combination of blindness, cowardice,  prevarication/rationalisation, denial and politicking.
 
JESUS STANDS FOR LIFE
 
Jesus stood up for us. “Jesus .. is our brother, flesh of our flesh and blood of our blood. It is precisely as the incarnate Son shares with the Father his eternal being and nature, that he also shares with us our contingent and mortal being and nature.” (1) But as we have stated above, Jesus shares Himself into our persons by the Spirit so that we become the expression of His Person. Thus real holiness and wholeness is ours when we live from His life in us.
 
BETTER THAN A PLACE-HOLDER
 
We can if we go no deeper than adopting Christianity as a word or as a religion, live outside the mystery of Godliness which is Christ come in our flesh. It is only as Christ becomes us by His indwelling Spirt expressed as us that we experience genuine transformation into His likeness, This means we live as agents of His Kingdom rather than place-holders of religion.
 
The words ‘born again are more than the Christian cliche that they have become. Born again means that Christ has come in our flesh, that He is our life by incarnation and because of that we are actual agents of new creation life when we speak His Truth rather than shuffling about in selfish, self-serving pseudo-grace. For the religious person born again means our living Christ our resolute life rather than passive religion as our life.
 
JESUS SHARES HIMSELF
 
Torrance writes, “In virtue of his divine reality and presence incarnate within mankind he acts upon people in an utterly divine and creative way, making them partake of himself through grace and thus partake of God.” (2)
 
We participate in the divine nature because of the atonement and by the dynamic of the incarnation. We call this life in the spirit. This is distinct from the gifts and the anointing which are an effect of our participation in God – not the participation itself. We need to grasp this because Godliness lived by us as a state of being come about from living ingthe union with God Jesus has bought us. The gifts and the anointing are not the Gospel and can soon fade if not rooted in the  soil of our lived union with God. The union that is ours in the person of Christ.


 
(1)Torrance, Thomas F.. The Trinitarian Faith (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (p. 136). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
(2)Torrance, Thomas F..  Ibid. (p. 139). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.