CHRIST IN YOU NOW
21/12/24 11:33
‘When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory’ Col 3.4 NIV. Jesus has appeared and He is in you.
When I was small and later as a youth, every little blip and major conflict was construed as a ‘sign’ of Christ’s coming. Christ is coming again and there will be a new earth – but no one knows the day or the hour of this.
More to the point Christ has come in the Spirit. This is to say the big deal of the post cross age is the incarnation that follows atonement of the cross. Christ came among us and Pentecost signalled that Christ comes in us and the Church. Incarnation means the trinity in you. It’s the fuller meaning of life in the Spirit. The latter is more than signs, wonders and gifts. Unless lived from the atonement/incarnation the gifts have no root and inevitably fade. The full Gospel is Christ our life. The major manifestation of the Spirit is you as the expression of Christ.
Some make an idol of the past and others make an idol of progress. The former can leave us stultified and the latter as flaky disciples of the latest fad. Whether something is old or new is not the point. What matters whether it is alive as the medium of love.
GLORY
‘When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory’ Col 3.4 NIV. The ‘Second-Comingist’ might frame this as what happens at the end of the age. But much of it is our life in Christ now. Incarnated with Him, Christ is in us as so that we are the hope and actuality of glory – the glory of the self expressed in Christ.
The glory of God is to be who God is. Thus, life is to be found in knowing God and Jesus Christ whom God has sent. The glory of you is to be who you are. Who you are is who you are in Christ. The Son of Man extinguishes your Adam and manifests Christ in you. Glory is not how much we can consume. It’s not necessarily being a celebrity or ‘productive’ or an Achiever. Real love is to love God, yourself, others and the Earth. Glory is to be yourself giving love as yourself in Christ. Only genuine love is real life and we get this in Christ. Only in Christ do we become our real selves. Contained in the religion of Christ we remain a false self until we are reborn into oneness with Jesus. When are we reborn? When we transition from life in religion to living Christ our life.
AT THE BEGINNING
Our starting place in the Kingdom of God is not the anointing. Neither is it the gifts of the Spirit. It’s not the law and it’s not Christian values or moralism. It’s Christ our life. When Jesus declares Himself the way, the truth and the life, he means what He says. It is Christ and not religion that is our life. Either we are alive in the Spirit or dead in the law. This is so because Christ is our union with God and God’s union with us.
NEW YOU CONCEIVED
Let’s start at the beginning. You are in Christ and Christ is in you. Christ’s life means the grace that is Jesus. It means the vicarious humanity of Christ. This means that Jesus ‘stands in’ for us and more. It means He is us vis a vis God and living. It means that Jesus lives in you so that you grow into the real you. We can ignore this and remain a phantom of our true selves. Or we can step into it and mature as sons/daughters of God.
CHRIST IS OUR LIFE
While the gifts of the Spirit are great, they are not the life of God. Christ in us is the life of God which is to say that the incarnation – Christ come in you personally is the life of God manifest with you and as you. Some talk of the presence that comes when we say things like ‘Come Holy Spirit’. But we should realise that the Presence is always in us and with us because we are incarnated with the trinity. Take care that you do not wait for what you already have. Incarnation is not reliant on keys and formulae. This is the whole point of Leanne Payne’s book Real Presence. You might be surprised to learn how many think this presence is caused by doing something for God. No. It’s the result of the atonement and incarnation. The presence is in you and you are in the presence. Christ did it.
IN BODILY FORM - YOURS
John Crowder puts it this way, “Paul told the Colossians that in Jesus Christ, the whole fullness of the Godhead lives in bodily form (Col. 2:9). That means Holy Spirit was in Jesus; the Father was in Jesus; and of course, there was Jesus Himself. The entire triune God. ..
“What are you filled with? Just Holy Spirit alone? No. Your mystical union with Christ fills you with the entire Godhead. That means Jesus is in you. It also means the Father of Lights lives within you – the One who breathed the very stars into existence. He’s right here, fully inside of you! You don’t just have a little portion of God. Not just one percent of Him ..You have the fullness of the Godhead in there. All thanks to your union with Christ. If you started to actually believe how much heat you’re packing inside of you, you could change the world in a single day.” (1)
ROOTED IN THE TRINITY
Therefore, we should live in the incarnation and not in victories, routines, Bible studies or anointings. We should live in the foundation of the Kingdom of God – the fullness of God come in sour being. To live in this reality instead of doing religion is Godliness and spirituality. Religion is just religion and is the major counterfeit of your inheritance: Union with God.
Jesus lives as the expression of the Father. When we live as the expression of Jesus we are not working something up or crucifying the flesh. We are simply agreeing with Christ that He is our life and that His life in His Father is our life in Father. It’s the marketing of religion as the Kingdom that stops the Kingdom happening. It’s living in the union with God that is already ours that releases Kingdom Life naturally and consistently in everyday folks who have become streams of spirit and life.
DON’T CONFUSE RELIGION WITH WHAT ALREADY IS: INCARNATION
A man I knew was aiming to have more of Christ by doing communion three times a day. But it’s not the bread and the wine that brings the presence. The Lord’s Table is the reminder and the sign that the incarnation is our everyday life.
MAGIC
Crowder writes, “There is lots of charismatic voodoo going on in the church today.. But those are extremes – not the primary modes by which people get
bewitched. The spell is much more subtle on the majority of folks. It is
usually through the “mundane” disciplines that people get caught up in this..
Disciplines which seem innocent enough, but which quickly become the subconscious indicators of how we gauge our own spirituality. In other words, we appeal to our own spiritual activity rather than the finished work of Christ to define our identity.” (2) Law-mongers are professionals at this.
GIFT OF GODS
The fullness of God is not in you because you sat in your prayer chair or did your devotions. The fullness of God is in you because the fullness of God is in you. A better discipline is to live in this reality rather than living in the many assumptions of separation that are the religious illusion into which we have been socialised.
When a ministry opportunity arises we can do two things. We can deliver a piece of the knowledge of good and evil or we can be spirit and life and release a stream of spirit and life that grows the Kingdom of God. We multiply spirit and life when we are spirit and life as sons/daughters of God. But not as workers.
(1) John Crowder, Mystical Union.
(2) Ibid.