GENUINE KINGDOM AGENCY
19/01/25 09:25
God is known through His being. Not through the law or from positions or rites. God is not known through religion because the Kingdom of Christ is not a religion. It is the person as Jesus in you, and it is a communion as in the trinity. God is known through Himself, incarnated in you and in people in whom God dwells in spirit and in truth. Here we are referring to oneness with God as distinct from oneness with a belief system. *
IN HIM
‘In Him’ does not mean in Christianity. It means an ontological union with God. Knowing God, being Godly and knowing ourselves becomes real because we have been drawn into Christ’s life – a trinitarian fellowship with God. As. Baxter Kruger points out. It’s not so much about our ‘receiving Christ.’ It’s about us having been received into Christ’s life. As part of God’s being we have become who we are: The I am of us and as such truly daughters/sons.
OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD IS THROUGH GOD. NOT THROUGH THE LAW
This Kingdom life is about ‘being.’ It’s being in relationship with God who is the embodiment of relationship. Nothing abstruse here. It’s as simple as ‘Christ becomes you’. Your relationship with God is not through the law. Neither is it a religious contract to achieve union with God. You already have union in Jesus.
ONTOLOGY
The technical term for ‘being’ is ontology. There used to be an excellent Christian magazine called ‘On Being.’ Only in God’s being are we real people. In God’s being we are real sons/daughters. In oneness with God we are in the Spirit of the One Spirit. We are not in the Spirit if we are joined to the law.
THE WHO OF GOD AND YOU
Stephen Morrison helps us understand the who of God and of us in his remarks on our sonship when ‘known’ in the context of a relationship with the trinity. This kind of ‘knowing’ is the knowing that describes the relationship of spouses. It is significant that the trinity’s knowing of each other resulted in the birthing of the sons of God.
MEANING OF PERSONS
“Coming to understand God’s personal being in the light of onto-relational personhood redefines what it means for the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to be persons. It also redefines how human beings are meant to be persons, even if this is rarely how we see personhood. We are persons not in isolation from others but our very personhood is constituted by the relationships we keep. I am not a human being in isolation from others: I am a son, a husband, and a friend. I would not be who I am without these relationships, for they constitute my identity as a human being.” (1)
Thus we are who we are in communion with God and each other. Never who we are in a relationship of rules and abstractions.
*We may live in union with God and have a system of beliefs that are an expression of this union. Then again we may have a belief system and mistake this for God and think it is a relationship with God.
(1) Morrison, Stephen D.. T. F. Torrance in Plain English (Plain English Series Book 2) (pp. 109-110). Beloved Publishing, LLC. Kindle Edition.