BEING IN AND WITH GOD
29/04/23 09:56
Christ is in you and the world is His Footstool. In Christ our life we have the luxury of being with God in every aspect of our living.
Richard Rohr writes, “Once we know that the entire physical world around us, all of creation, is both the hiding place and the revelation place for God, this world becomes home, safe, enchanted, offering grace to any who look deeply.”
God was incarnated in the world before the incarnation of Jesus Christ. God manifested in the religious life of Israel. But God manifested personally in Jesus Christ. He manifests today in those who love and especially in those who love life. Those who love Christ and agree that they are one with Him become an expression of Christ’s face. The community of the Church is less and expression of the Christian Industry and all of the expression of Jesus come in the flesh of people.
INCARNATED
As sons and daughters of God we bear the likeness of God in our humanity. We are made in the image of God and we do partake in the divine nature. The ‘divine nature’ is the trinity (which is a study in itself) – the ‘who’ of what it means to be God. The truth of who God is – His identity is trinity. The belief that God is ‘law’ is nonsense and an idolatrous heresy that distorts and cripples believers not just in their muscles and joints but in the spirit, soul and body.
INDIVIDUALITY AND COMMUNITY MODELLED
In the trinity, each member is distinct yet part of the other. This union in individuality was called perichoresis by the Church Fathers. It denotes the trinitarian nature of God and its meaning for God’s identity. More to the point it is significant for our identity and transformation as persons who are sons of God. The belonging of each member of the trinity to each other is the belonging that Jesus has drawn us in to and the belonging that is His life as us.
LIFE TO THE FULL
No one married to the law will ever be fully alive. The Gospel is not only about forgiveness for sin. It’s about being life ourselves achieved through oneness with God WHO IS LIFE IN HIMSELF.
God is inclusion, oneness and belonging as God. It is this belonging and this union that we have been drawn into in the person of Jesus Christ. In Him is life and that life is the life of all.
BEING AND IDENTITY
Thomas Torrance unpacks the significance of God’s being, the trinity, its pertinence to our inclusion in God as daughters and sons. To be one with the triune God is to be in the spirit of sonship. To be one with a being defined as ‘the law’ is not. It’s to be a kind of abstraction.
ONE SUBSTANCE
“The homoousion crystallises the conviction that while the incarnation falls within the structures of our spatio-temporal humanity in this world, it also falls within the Life and Being of God - that is its astounding implication which needs to be thought out very carefully.
WITH US AND IN US
Jesus Christ is not a mere symbol, some functional representation of God detached from God, but God in his own Being and Act come among us, exhibiting and expressing in our human form the very Word which he is eternally in himself … As the epitomised expression of this truth, the homoousion is the ontological and epistemological linchpin of Christian theology. It gives expression to the truth with which everything hangs together, and without which everything ultimately falls apart.” (1)
This is why ‘This is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth’ is not just a pretty saying. It is the consequence of the outworking of the being of God in the New Creation in us and in society.
(1) Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (p. 95). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Richard Rohr writes, “Once we know that the entire physical world around us, all of creation, is both the hiding place and the revelation place for God, this world becomes home, safe, enchanted, offering grace to any who look deeply.”
God was incarnated in the world before the incarnation of Jesus Christ. God manifested in the religious life of Israel. But God manifested personally in Jesus Christ. He manifests today in those who love and especially in those who love life. Those who love Christ and agree that they are one with Him become an expression of Christ’s face. The community of the Church is less and expression of the Christian Industry and all of the expression of Jesus come in the flesh of people.
INCARNATED
As sons and daughters of God we bear the likeness of God in our humanity. We are made in the image of God and we do partake in the divine nature. The ‘divine nature’ is the trinity (which is a study in itself) – the ‘who’ of what it means to be God. The truth of who God is – His identity is trinity. The belief that God is ‘law’ is nonsense and an idolatrous heresy that distorts and cripples believers not just in their muscles and joints but in the spirit, soul and body.
INDIVIDUALITY AND COMMUNITY MODELLED
In the trinity, each member is distinct yet part of the other. This union in individuality was called perichoresis by the Church Fathers. It denotes the trinitarian nature of God and its meaning for God’s identity. More to the point it is significant for our identity and transformation as persons who are sons of God. The belonging of each member of the trinity to each other is the belonging that Jesus has drawn us in to and the belonging that is His life as us.
LIFE TO THE FULL
No one married to the law will ever be fully alive. The Gospel is not only about forgiveness for sin. It’s about being life ourselves achieved through oneness with God WHO IS LIFE IN HIMSELF.
God is inclusion, oneness and belonging as God. It is this belonging and this union that we have been drawn into in the person of Jesus Christ. In Him is life and that life is the life of all.
BEING AND IDENTITY
Thomas Torrance unpacks the significance of God’s being, the trinity, its pertinence to our inclusion in God as daughters and sons. To be one with the triune God is to be in the spirit of sonship. To be one with a being defined as ‘the law’ is not. It’s to be a kind of abstraction.
ONE SUBSTANCE
“The homoousion crystallises the conviction that while the incarnation falls within the structures of our spatio-temporal humanity in this world, it also falls within the Life and Being of God - that is its astounding implication which needs to be thought out very carefully.
WITH US AND IN US
Jesus Christ is not a mere symbol, some functional representation of God detached from God, but God in his own Being and Act come among us, exhibiting and expressing in our human form the very Word which he is eternally in himself … As the epitomised expression of this truth, the homoousion is the ontological and epistemological linchpin of Christian theology. It gives expression to the truth with which everything hangs together, and without which everything ultimately falls apart.” (1)
This is why ‘This is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth’ is not just a pretty saying. It is the consequence of the outworking of the being of God in the New Creation in us and in society.
(1) Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (p. 95). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
