BUBBLE OF CONFUSION
30/05/24 13:28
We can live in a bubble and call it our faith or live in the incarnation and call it Christ’s Faith. Lesser gospels always contain some element of ‘jumping through hoops.’
The genuine Gospel that is open to all who are not too passive to seize it, continually reveals its native simplicity and comprehensive grace. This is a grace in which the kindness, love and joy of God is made plain to those who do not leave their ‘talents’ – their massive inheritance’ - in the ground. Not covered up because these Believers are alive and sighted in a discipleship that follows Jesus everywhere He leads. I mean a discipleship that does not stop at the borders of our received beliefs but follows Jesus into the infinite life that is ours in Him.
CHRIST HAS COME TO YOU
God has taken the initiative in coming to us. God is proactive in Jesus Christ who gives us His intimacy with Father as our own intimacy with Father. Intimacy with God is not ours on account of our performance. Don’t let habitual sins and feeble resolve hold you back from intimacy with Jesus. His intimacy with Father is your intimacy with Him. It’s ours as a result of Jesus performance and the mediation of Himself on our behalf. We are one with God in Christ.
A LIVED REALITY
Incarnation is a continual and present intimacy that is not dependent on sensing the presence of God. You access this by believing that incarnation is the reality in which you live. This is not to resist manifestations and gifts of the Spirit. But it is to assert that the foundational reality is your oneness with God – made actual in the person of Jesus Christ in you.
SON AND WORD
Thomas Torrance writes, “God comes as God the Son and God the Word. He comes as God the Son to enter our rebellious estate in order to effect reconciliation by living out his life of filial obedience where we are disobedient, and he comes as God the Word to enter into our darkness and blindness in order to effect revelation by manifesting the love of God and by achieving from within humanity faithful appropriation of divine revelation.
WHOLE AND HOLY
The act of God the Son and of God the Word are not two acts but one act, for revelation is part of reconciliation and reconciliation is part of revelation. In both, as one mighty act, God fulfils the covenant from the side of God, ‘I will be your God, your Father’, and fulfils the covenant from the side of man, ‘I will be your obedient child’. This is the mighty act of the incarnation which is at once the act of God’s humiliation and the act of man’s exaltation.” (1)
None of us are called to be workaholic dead people. Christ in us makes our spirit alive so that we are actually life-givers rather than multipliers of charity or religion. This is the AT-ONE-MENT in which you, Jesus, Father and Holy Spirit have become one. This is the oneness that is yours and in which Jesus invites us to live by participating in His life and His communion with Father and Holy Spirit. This is what makes our spirit alive and our actions the multiplication of spirit and life. It’s what builds the Kingdom that is new creation life.
Thomas Torrance, Incarnation, The Person and Life of Christ. P.57
