DOOR OUT OF THE SHELL OF DELUSION
07/12/24 12:57
The Gospel of the Kingdom is Christ in you. Paul expanded on this with the words ‘Christ your life’, John spoke of it as ‘Christ come in the flesh.’ Theologians call it the incarnation and the vicarious humanity of Christ. Paul explained it succinctly in Galatians 2.20,21 by writing, ‘I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. “I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.” Paul writes of Christ expressed for us and as us and warns us off non-gospels of the law/moralism.
NON-GOSPEL
Humility and truth-seeking serve as the only antidote capable of breaking down those shells of delusion that insulates us from the spirit and life that is Christ .For Paul a law-based gospel is a non-gospel because it abolishes the achievement of Christ in securing for us oneness with God. But Christ lives in you. He is our life and our union with God. We are united to God in Christ’s Person.
YOU
We can exercise some of the gifts of the spirit and still be a broken soul. A life of oneness with God comes not from performance or the gifts. Neither does it come from signs and wonders like healings. It comes from the atonement. AT-ONE- WITH GOD-AND SELF IN CHRIST. The main invasion of earth from heaven is the incarnation, which is Christ realized as Jesus of Nazareth and now in people like you and I. This is to say that the main manifestation of the Sprit is you. The holistic expression of God is you and is us. In Jesus we are made one with God and His sons/daughters – the expression of His nature. The idea of a whole person approach through the law is like sowing seeds on glass and expecting them to grow.
WHY THE SPIRIT FADES
We are dead souls in separation from Christ. Good works and gifts of the Spirit cannot be sustained in separation from Christ. They are particularly dormant and short-lived when separation is our religion because we live in the law – fading in Adam’s separation instead of flourishing in Christ’s union. Don’t be among the keepers of the lame. Jesus does not put religion in you, the law in you or some agenda in you. He puts Himself in you.
GROWING MORE ALIVE
When we maintain ourselves in the law, we always stagnate. Spirit and life comes from Christ to us and Christ in us, which is what Paul is declaring to us in Romans 8. ‘And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit, who lives in you’ Rom 8.11 NIV. This is just as much about daily living as the resurrection because in this mode you are a spiritual being and nor mere mechanical. Life from Jesus is spirit and life that makes for the full flowering of you and the Kingdom agency that results.
WOVEN IN
This is not only eternal life. This is the life of Christ as opposed to the life of Adam. It’s eternal life that weaves us into the being of God. This oneness with God is the Source of the gifts and the anointing. They are the result of Christ come in our flesh, of the new covenant lived out in ordinary life. But these are not the cause of a robust self of agency and life. Should we neglect the incarnation and by-pass it for gifts and good works they will fade and become corrupted because they are the effect of the Kingdom and not the cause. Live from cause to effect which is to live from Christ our life.
THE BIG SIGN IS UNION WITH GOD
Gifts and the Miracles done in a silo are not the Kingdom of God. Frank Viola who practices and believes in the gifts and the miraculous today, observes that what is purported to be a full gospel is often no gospel at all. He writes that many whose focus is miracles and signs “tend to be monumentally uninterested in knowing Jesus in ways that are deeper than dramatic physical manifestations... for them, Jesus is the equivalent of signs and wonders. So to their minds, if a sign or wonder isn't taking place, Jesus is taking a nap.” As Viola notes, the presence of the Christ in one is subtle and pervasive resulting in well balanced persons. We get to be fully human as expression of the Christ who is imbuing us. Here we are at peace in our souls and free of emotional disease. We manifest life in from our selves, and in our marriages and families. Now we are whole persons because Christ is our life.
ALWAYS IN YOU
The Gospel of the Kingdom is a graced union with God. Karl Barth observes, “If anything Christian be unrelated to the Gospel, it is a human by-product, a dangerous religious survival, a regrettable misunderstanding. For in this case content would be substituted for a void, convex for concave, positive for negative, and the characteristic marks of Christianity would be possession and self-sufficiency rather than deprivation and hope.
HOLLOW MEN
“If this be persisted in, there emerges, instead of the community of Christ, Christendom, an ineffective peace-pact or compromise with that existence which, moving with its own momentum, lies on this side resurrection. Christianity would then have lost all relation to the power of God.” Works of mission and charity are not a rationalisation for a gospel that is ‘no gospel at all.
Here Barth certifies that real Kingdom Life is an incarnation – not a religion – a fact that sets the Kingdom Jesus began apart from religiosity. Unless Christ is our life by the Spirit, what we call our faith is merely a projection of our own ideas and we are dormant and un-spiritual.
When communities of faith live from half-gospels and ‘other gospels. They have accommodated themselves to subverted versions of what Jesus represents and what the apostles taught. Sincere works, signs and wonders are never a substitute for the Gospel of the Kingdom. In themselves they lead to limited life and spiritual disease. Such works and signs are the effect of the incarnation and are the fruit of our union with God. They are never a thing in themselves.