AGREE THAT CHRIST IS YOUR LIFE

 
 
‘Acceptance and belonging in God is not achieved by daunting, arduous endeavour.’ We cannot earn Christ by taking our own steps to Christ. Godliness is not about our keeping close to Jesus which we are no better at than were the Jews at keeping the law.
 
YOU ARE ONE WITH CHRIST
 
‘We are liberated by Christ to grow into the ontological reality of who we are in Christ, as we freely share by the Holy Spirit in the incarnate Son’s communion with the Father.’ This is the Gospel of Jesus, Paul and John. All other versions are aberrations or straight out gnostic gospels from another source.
 
IT’S ABOUT BEING
 
The ontological reality is that our state of being is union with God in the Christ of God. As a result we possess genuine agency as persons because Christ is our life. Hidden in Christ we are formed as the sons/daughters we are. We are re-created in our true identity as sons and daughters of God in spirit and in truth. Spirit and truth means in word and in being.
 
Richard Rohr observes, “The cultural ideal of the Western industrialized world is the self-made, self-sufficient, autonomous individual who stands by himself or herself, not needing anyone else . . . and not beholden to anyone for anything…This is the ideal that people live and work for. It is their goal in life, and they will sacrifice anything to achieve it. This is how you “get a life for yourself.” This is how you discover your identity.” But this produces millions of people who at best have no life other than their work and at worst the facilitation into ‘leadership’ of people like Donald Trump. The deceit of the Enemy is that in varying degrees we must live a lie to do it, never becoming who we are and always separated fin our spirit from God and from our true selves.
 
God is a spirit and those who worship Him worship in spirit and in truth. Belief in Jesus makes us one with God by the One Spirit. Real and undiluted life is ours when our spirit is one with God’s Spirit.
 
What happens in the spirit is subtle yet momentous. The seed of distrust in God embedded by Satan in Adam precipitated the Fall and humanities’ separation from God. God in the Son of God/Son of Man undid this separation in the person of Christ. Our union with God is accomplished as we agree with Christ in our spirit that Christ is our life; that Jesus has included us in His life in God.
 
CHRIST COME IN OUR FLESH
 
We live this union by incarnation which is life in the Spirit – the oneness we celebrate at the Lord’s Table. To ignore this already accomplished oneness, to sideline the atonement and attempt union with God by our own legalities, grasped externalities and self-made ‘grace,’ is to negate the cross and extend the fall and its separation. It makes us keepers of the lame and extenders of the lie. Legalism is at best the result of a misunderstood and at worst a gnostic religious aberration claiming special knowledge.
 
 
SON-IDENTITY
 
We may have little understanding of ourselves because we have no real self. The self we do have may be an economic or religious construct. But the ‘you’ of you is Christ your life. This is the real you that is revealed because you are hidden in Christ who is your life.
 
We may have not have thought much about who we are. Our real self may have become lost in the rubble of our workaholism. Some of us are more contemplative than others but all have some of this facility -  if we can be still enough to rest awhile – to rest from the attempt to gain self-worth from obsessive busyness and formulaic Christianity.
 
MARTHA
 
Martha’s protestations have merit to the religious mind. Martha-ism blinds us to our own need and blinds us to the value of those who have the insight to seek life where it may be found: Being with Christ. Being with Christ is all about being. It’s about being sons/daughters of substance and being sons and daughters who have an affinity with real life and the the paths of real life. If our spirit has never connected with Christ, it’s not difficult to be an active Christian who has no real life. In Christ our life we can be active and rivers of living water because we are alive.
 
CHRIST’S REALITY IS REALITY
 
As opposed to oneness with God, an old covenant mindset defines us in Adam’s separation from God and separation from ourselves, despite our assertions. Mary was entering the realm where she and Jesus are one.
 
The incarnation is not a construct or an abstraction unless we have made our religion from the letter that kills. The incarnation is you and us as the manifestation of the trinity who are alive in ourselves and the Church. This is what sons and daughters of God are. If we will not live from this reality, we consign ourselves to be dead folks talking. The tragedy of the self as a ‘letter person’ is that we do not know that we are not alive. The joy of incarnated daughters and sons is that they impart God’s life to the ordinary.
 
WITH SUBSTANCE
 
All believers are in the Body of Christ by designation. But they belong in spirit and truth when by the Spirit they agree with Christ that He is their life. The atonement covers all men and women. But those who live this oneness are those whose heart has said to Christ, ‘I do.’ We have one husband who is Christ.
 
The incarnation is the great truth of the New Testament age. Christ is woven into our being to become the expression of us as Joe and Mary.
 
Don’t insulate yourself from union with Christ by constructions of your own. We can dribble spirit and life or we can be rivers of living water. When Jesus said, ‘Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you’ He meant the spirit and life that grows the Kingdom. We cannot literally eat Jesus. But we can in the Spirit – by agreeing that He is indeed our life. The Lord’s Table is a symbol and a reminder of the life we are living in oneness with Him. Not a tonic or a grasping at something we do not yet have. The eucharist is the sign of a lived life.
 
ALREADY IN HIM
 
J Baxster Kruger writes, “Jesus has received us into his life.  We don’t make him part of our world; he has made us a part of his.  He has included us in the abounding life he shares with his Father and in his anointing with the Spirit.  And the us he has included is not the perfect us, not the untarnished version that we present to the world and hope everyone believes.  The us he has included is the broken us, the wounded, tired, and scared us, the self-centred, self-protecting, hiding us.  So we are in for a wild ride.  For Jesus is determined that the broken us come to know his Father’s love in the freedom of the Spirit. He won’t give up.” (1)
You do belong.
 
(1) Kruger, C. Baxter. Across All Worlds: Jesus Inside Our Darkness (Kindle Locations 179-185). Perichoresis, Inc. Kindle Edition.