GOD IS LOVE MEANS..
17/06/24 14:10
We can say ‘God is love’ and relate to it as a proposition that is an abstraction. If we do our religion becomes a construct rather than a state of being that is alive. Legalism and non-trinitarianism usually go together. A law-lens portrays God as an abstraction; as an abstraction that meshes with moralism and the frame of the knowledge of good and evil.
But since God is love, God by definition is more than one – and in fact is three. The trinity is the model of communion and our reason for being created. They wanted to share their joy. Legalism diminishes God and reduces us.
LIVING ORDER
The order of heaven is the trinity – which is the Communion of Love.
There is no law in heaven nor was there law before the fall. The order that existed was not the kind of law that we think of in a judicial sense and not the law from which the Hebrews lived. The order of heaven was com-union with God, described by Paul as having one’s being in God. Adam and Eve began in the Communion of God that is God’s trinitarian life. The ‘law of the spirit of life’ that Paul cites is not the Mosaic law energised by Christ. It is the trinitarian life in which we are now included in the person of Jesus. To be ‘in Christ’ is to be included in this Communion of the Trinitarian God. In this belonging we are energised with the Spirit of God who is our life. This is the whole point of the. Eucharist.
INCLUDED IN LOVE
Oneness with the trinity is Godliness, righteousness, and life to the full. Righteousness is never irrelevant where oneness with God is concerned. Because we become the fruit of His Vine. This is life in the Spirit by which the Christ of God is expressed as you. To express righteousness as a list is to dumb it down. To express it as Christ is to be alive in God’s life.
THE LIVING WAY
We need to drop the kind of grace that is oriented to dealing with the law. When I was a little boy, my mother told me that the difference between ourselves and other Christians was that they believed that the law had been done away with at the cross. Other Christians were right about that. Jesus is not a superior way of keeping the law. Such a view reveals and ignorance of what Jesus achieved for us by His life and cross.
Jesus does transcend the law but He does so by weaving Himself into us so that He has come in our flesh by the Spirit and we are made one with God and are imbued with His nature. Paul calls this Christ our life. It’s the trinity incarnated in us and expressed as Bob and Jane.
The idea of participating in the divine nature by keeping the law is a sad nonsense. We participate in the divine nature by atonement and incarnation.
Godliness is taking on God-Qualities which is the effect of Christ is in you and us.
GRACE
Grace is not something that helps us cope with the law. Grace is the person of Christ who is our life as forgiveness, righteousness and fullness of life. Jesus spoke and acted spirit and life. He did so because He and His Father were one. Since the cross we have been included in the oneness of Father that Jesus enjoyed. This is the state of being that is ours, courtesy of the enterprise of the trinity and the achievements of Christ. It’s your inheritance.
LIFE ITSELF
But this is not all of Grace. The agency of this Grace is that Christ is our life. Incarnated in our being, Jesus becomes us – which is to say that the face of Jesus may be seen in Bill and Mavis who believe in Him. Perichoresis means that you are one with Christ while flourishing as you. Jesus becomes us both as righteousness and making us alive in our body, soul and spirit. When we think that we are blessed because Jesus helps us keep the law we are not blessed. We are cursed.
REDUCTIONIST RIGHTEOUSNESS
We can do better than attempt to attain a superior amalgam of good and evil. There is a better way than living from the law, from Christian values and fashionable moralities. We can invite Christ to take His place in our flesh. We can live separated from good/evil dichotomies by agreeing with Jesus that He is our life.
‘When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory’ Col 3.4 NIV. In Christ we live in the glory of our own being instead of living as A PROJECT.
HOW MIXTURE BEGAN
Living from the law can be a combination of misdirected effort and virtue signalling to ourselves and God. Jeff Turner explains why with reference to our pre-fall relationship with God. “In this state of possessing a pure knowledge of God humanity was lacking in any concept of good or evil, for this “knowledge” had not yet become a part of the human experience.
It had yet to enter into our lives which would seem to suggest that originally, man was not made to behold God as “holy” in a moral or behavioural sense, as God discouraged man from eating the fruit that would grant him this ability.
In man’s original mind there were no lines of distinction between good and bad, or sacred and secular. God was all in all, and Adam and Eve enjoyed life in the context of His presence, without a consciousness or understanding of sin. God was not the judge, the rule master or the dispenser of fines and penalties for moral infractions. He was simply Father, and above all He was Love.” To know and live this is to live Christ our life instead of a religion. This is because real life is an incarnation of the trinity in you.
DUALISM UNDONE - THE TWO MADE ONE
An ultimate dualism is the notion of the ‘Great Controversy.’ The subsidiary dualism is the false dichotomy of sacred and secular. The epistemological dualism is the knowledge of good and evil.
There is no ‘great controversy’ since the cross and never was before it - because Satan is nowhere near in parity with Christ. Dualistic religiosity has its source in paganism of the kind embedded in much Egyptian religion and Zoroastrianism.
Dualism began with the fall and flows from separation from God as a misshapen, bisected way of life that is the essence of the knowledge of good and evil – the most subtle and pervasive form of legalism. Oneness with God began when Jesus cried, ‘It is finished.’ Separation had finished. You are one with God in Christ.
GNOSTIC RELIGION
Therefore, any Christian culture that suggests ‘keys’, strategies and behaviors to gain union with God is not the inheritance Jesus gifted us. Our inheritance is union with God. Our relationship with God is incarnation. Our living the incarnated life is our agreeing with Jesus that He is our life and that His life as a member of the trinity has been shared with us. YOU BELONG AND ARE INCLUDED IN THE COMMUNION THAT IS GOD.
