DISGARD A WRONG FOUNDATION
16/02/24 14:11
Exposing foundationalism as a degraded gospel, Douglas Campbell writes, “..They will develop an account of broader non-Christian reality in terms of attempted justification by works .. We have launched foundationalism, although this should not be too surprising. Any contractual account of salvation is necessarily foundationalist. (1)
A DEGRADED FOUDATION
In the things of the spirit, we create the reality we live in out of our beliefs. Thus in suggesting a critical view of the Father and a ‘lacking’ view of the original pair, Satan planted a narrative that changed the reality in which Adam and Eve lived. These lies changed their view of God and of themselves. The oneness that was theirs in God was broken and humanity entered the realm of the law of sin and death – sin caused by separation from God and death as the result of the un-life Satan precipitated in the knowledge of good and evil.
WHAT UNION?
The union lost was the union of being – a union similar to the union that the members of the trinity have with each other. When in the history of Israel, Jesus came among us in Palestine, He came in union with God. His oneness with Father and authenticity of Himself as I AM, gave him ‘authority not as the scribes.’ His was an authority of word and being.
SPIRIT OF SONSHIP
Here was the authority of a human being, grounded in the being of God. Jesus’ ability to multiply spirit and life came from being – from oneness with God. Not from definitions and quotations, like those who sought to justify themselves and deny Him on the grounds of texts and quotes they had adduced lop-sidedly from the scriptures.
HOLINESS AND WHOLENESS
‘On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ John 14.20. This is the day you become alive in your spirit and in His.
Believers can assure themselves that they belong to the Body of Christ in the letter but live separated from Him in their being. They do belong, but the substance of this ‘belonging’ is not realized because they have a distracted mind. Which is why Paul exclaimed that one can be circumcised,* yet not a Jew with substance. Similarly we can notionally belong to the Body of Christ but not in spirit and truth - because we believe in a gospel that maintains the law instead of eliminating it in the person of Jesus. This has been describes as living the ‘inverted cross’.
SELF JUSTIFICATION
By living in the law and from moralism and from rules and words arranged to justify positions, we can assert belonging while living in separation. We are in the letter that kills.
We are in separation because we have not followed Christ out of the law and Mosaic separation into the union with Him that is ours in the new covenant. Contractual religion, legalism and ‘letterising’ enables us posit a self-made false grace as the bargain we think we have made with God. So we fumble along in this formulated religion having persuaded ourselves that this is Godliness. But it is not life of the kind that is spirit and life.
‘When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory’ Col 3.4 NIV. You increase in glory by living Christs real Gospel and becoming a true self as a life-giver.
Living this fiction excludes from our inheritance of being a real self and fully alive, It’s what Jesus meant by leaving your talents in the ground. We can side with the law because we are not willing to believe that God incarnated His life and righteousness as us by the Spirit. The gifts and anointing are of the Spirit. But they are not life in the Spirit. We can operate in the gifts yet live a feeble and disintegrated life – because spirit and life does not come from the gifts. It comes from union with God which is not ours until we live in it and cease living from our lop-sided foundation of legalism.
‘On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ John 14.29 NIV.
The result of this half-life is that we are not wicked. Just dead folks walking because our spirits are not alive. It’s sad when people come to the end of their lives having achieved but a smidgeon of godliness even though they did well in legalism. They may have received some honour from benighted peers, but they never functioned as one of Christ’s agents of Kingdom spirit and life.
REALIZED UNION OR LIFELESS TEXT
Real Life is the state of being one with God. In this way we are living words, rather than semi-dead in the letter that kills. Stephen Morrison speaks to the dead tree of legalism when he writes, “By mistakenly identifying “biblical statements of truth with the truth to which they refer,” fundamentalists focus more on the statements of truth rather than on the truth its statements point us towards.
PROTESTANT POPE
This ultimately results in turning the Bible into a protestant “paper pope” (Barth’s phrase). Biblical infallibility attempts to justify statements of truth apart from the truth to which its statements refer. Therefore, inerrancy attempts to make the statements of the Bible a self-contained foundation for truth, thus removing its statements from the foundation of Jesus Christ who is the truth. As such, it is a form of self-justification.” (2) This is how not to use the Bible. The Bible means what Jesus means it to mean when we live incarnated with Christ rather than living the religion of Christ. Unless our loyalty to Jesus surpassed received beliefs, we will not understand the Gospel or the Bible.
THE CORE LIE
Most of the lies emanating from the father of lies are aimed at separating Believers from their oneness in Christ. Self-justifying fictions can warp the Bible and insulate us from the fullness of Christ creating crippled limbs in the Body. But as part of the Vine in Jesus you will know the truth and the truth will set you free of humbug and cunningly devised fables.
* or one can be a Sabbath-keeper but not enjoy a Sabbath Life.
(1) Douglas Campbell. Pauline Dogmatics The Triumph of Gods Love..319
(2) Morrison, Stephen D.. T. F. Torrance in Plain English (Plain English Series Book 2) (p. 134). Beloved Publishing, LLC. Kindle Edition.
