CHRIST IS OUR NEW COVENANT IDENTITY
22/05/24 11:58
The fear of Truth that afflicts the inmates of sects is that truth might destroy the contract they have made with their community and God. When we are disciples of Christ we need not fear the Truth.
Reality is Christ. So we need a real Gospel and a true Christ to know the Christ of Reality. If the Enemy can get us to adopt a bent gospel and a false christ he has bent us out of shape and made us receptacles of emotional disease and corrupted religion. “The three images to be awakened and transformed are our image of self, our image of God, and our image of the world. A true hearing of the gospel transforms those images into a very exciting and, I believe, truthful worldview. When we say Christ is the truth, that’s what we mean. Christ renames reality correctly, according to what reality honestly is, putting aside whatever we think it is or whatever we fear it is.” (1)
PENETRATING VISION
Spiritual Discernment is helped by intelligence but assisted infinitely more by union with God. It’s curious that some not so intellectually bright or educated can at times have far better spiritual discernment than folks with a high IQ and a bunch of degrees. Such discernment comes from a hunger for God, humility and living in the new covenant – meaning oneness with God. Religious, like political conservativism encloses us in a bubble of imagined reality that is out of sync with life and contrary to the Gospel of Jesus and the apostles.
Mental ability and education are a great advantage when a person has a passion for Jesus and for following Him relentlessly.
WISDOM
The first deacons were chosen for being wise and full of the Holy Spirt. The gifts of the Spirit are not a substitute for intelligence and education. Wisdom and the Holy spirit are qualities of people that should be listened to. Ignorance does not aid the knowledge of God. Grace and the gifts are not an excuse for holding on to distorted ideas or an attachment to whacky beliefs claiming to be the Gospel of Jesus and the apostles.
TRAINED ASTIGMATISM
If we have learnt to see wrongly our vision will be crooked and our interpretation of reality askew – particularly in the realm of spirituality. James B Torrance writes, “The prime purpose of the incarnation, in the love of God, is to lift us up into a life of communion, of participation in the very triune life of God.” This is not the province of stubborn obsessions or distorted gospels.
Fruitfulness is good but fruitfulness that makes us alive and empowered to impart spirit and life to others comes from union with God. What is the union? It is the undoing of the separation that became ours in Adam’s fall. Our prize and the inheritance that is ours is the union with God that has become ours in Jesus Christ. In Christ we are in God and Jesus. God is in us.
COMPETENT AS LIFE MINISTERS
‘He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant--not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life’ 2 Cor 3.6 NIV.
Religion as a false christ makes people blind and exceptionally dull in the field of spiritual discernment. Christ Himself as our life makes us people who see that which is alive and that which is of the letter than makes dull and kills their spirit.
‘For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart’ Heb 4.12. The writer is speaking primarily of the Word who is Christ and secondarily of the written word of scripture. When Christ is our life we perceive correct doctrine and advance in wisdom.
NEW COVENANT SEEING
Visions and dreams in separation from union with God are not a reliable source of guidance. Spiritual discernment is almost entirely a function of the incarnation. Woven into Christ we see as Christ sees and see in the way in which He sees. Not so in the law. We are separated from God in our minds and we remain in Adam’s tree of deceit and false knowledge. You can have eyes to see but only if Christ’s eyes are your eyes. Otherwise, we will be among those who are ever hearing and not understanding and ever seeing and remaining blind.
There are folks who subtly avoid the truth in order to sustain the fictions that give them a status and identity – a false one. Don’t leave your treasure in the ground for the sake of junk food and a non-identity.
(1) Rohr, Richard . The Wisdom Pattern: Order, Chaos, Reorder (p. 128). Franciscan Media. Kindle Edition.
