CHRIST HAS EARNED YOU
28/02/24 07:42
Pelagianism* refers to the common error of thinking to earn Christ before we can have a relationship with Him. This is a wide-spread Christian myth. As one friend told me, ‘Intimacy with Christ is something we earn by righteous living’. She was wrong about that. It’s ours as a result of the atonement. This self-made burden is a naturally human/religious view that stifles Godly development. The truth is, that we, by the atonement are included in Christ and as result made one with God. This is where we begin. We begin in intimacy. In Christ we are positioned in God so that a Godly life consists of being the fruit of this union.
WE ARE PART OF HIS BODY
Christ’s life is our life as indicated by the eucharist which we should regard as our reality in God, rather than a rite. It points to a sacramental life in the person of Jesus Christ. A disciplined Christianity is not our earning Christ but our living in the reality that He has earned us and made us one with God.
START WHERE HE HAS PLACED YOU
We begin in intimacy with God in the Grace who is Christ. We do not earn Him because Christ has earned us. The result of an ‘earned grace’ which is an oxymoron in itself, is that the Gospel of Jesus and Paul is dulled down to a striving to achieve that which we already possess in Christ – oneness with God.
IMPOTENT GOSPEL
Douglas Campbell observes that, “This [Pelagian] move strips the electing and covenantal frame .. away completely, setting a disastrous set of consequences in train. Instead of locating the progress of disciples and their acquisition and description of freedom within a strong relational and covenantal frame [in full grace], the relationship itself, as well as its first establishment and underlying maintenance, is drawn into a notion of human action and progress [works]. This replaces the unconditional covenant, with all its insights into God's initiating and sustaining love, with a conditional arrangement’ put together by us. Thus the Christian life become the stuff I have done to achieve self-worth and acceptance by Christ.
A BASIC HUMBUG
“If Jesus followers have to act in a certain way not only to advance in their lives ethically but to relate to God in the first place, a fundamental displacement takes place in the whole relationship between God and humankind. It follows that this relationship must have had conditions inserted into it. [The wrong supposition that] God will not relate to people kindly until they have acted in a certain way.” In this distortion of the Gospel we are robbed of joy and Godliness by the subtle yet effective annihilation of grace by subtly perverse doctrine [of demons].
Christ is our life. Our relationship with Him is not our life. His relationship with God is ours in His name. Life in the Spirit is simply that Christ is you and us.
* Pelagianism’s fundamental tenet is that humans are capable of achieving salvation through their own efforts, without the need for divine intervention. Arminianism holds that although God’s grace is necessary for salvation, it is based on the individual’s choice to respond to it. Both are inherently works based. The latter being that our response to Christ’s invitation to come to Him is essentially a self-disciplined life. But Christ’s message and that of Paul and John is that Christ is our life. He is our call to God and our response to God in Himself. This is the vicarious humanity of Jesus which means He is for us and He is us as Saviour.
