GODLINESS IS CHRIST IN US
29/12/22 07:55
If ‘keeping close to Jesus’ is our Christian life, then our peace with God and salvation depends on us. If it depends on us, we have no real security and are likely to adopt a string-bag of self-made justification/sanctification behaviours and rites that we might call ‘our distinctives’. At best they don’t make us Godly and at worst they generate a false sense of entitlement.
IT’S CHRIST
Peace, joy and a Godly grace are found in Christ as our life, rather than in Christ as religion. While religion may be the package the contents/substance is Christ in you. Expressed as you.
When Paul states that ‘Christ is our life’ in Colossians, He is repeating what He has already said in Galatians 2.20,21. It’s what John means by ‘Christ come in our flesh’ which is another expression of ‘I am the Vine and you are the branches – meaning that we are a manifestation of Jesus Christ. Together we make up His Body. Incarnated with Jesus we are the Expression of Him in the world.
BEING SONS/DAUGHTERS
The fruit of the Spirit are none other than Christ in you manifest as you. This is the meaning of the Lord’s Table and the difference between our living in the letter that dulls and our living the reality of our inheritance – the state of being which is Christ come in George, Mavis and Syd.
HIS BURDEN IS LIGHT
Alexandra Radcliffe observes that, “The Torrance’s’ theology* offers a valuable corrective to the tremendous burden placed on people today by preaching and teaching that, whether blatantly or subtly, “throws people back upon themselves” to earn their relationship with God and to try to achieve by their own efforts the kind of person that they ought to be.” (1) Classically this is the heresy of Arminianism and more subtly it is a wide-spread form of sub-standard Christian belief.
YOU ARE THE EXPRESSION OF CHRIST
Christ expressed as Jill and Bob is the meaning of Christ our life in the post-cross age in which we live in Jesus Christ - having had our Adam put to death in Jesus and our real self-raised to life in Jesus.
Those who think that this is too airy-fairy to have real Christian substance might reflect on the fact that the Son of God manifested as Jesus of Nazareth. Fully God and one substance with God, the Son of God was incarnated as Jesus of Nazareth to live and teach among us and restore us to union with God. You have oneness with Christ now. This mystery realised as you is what we call life in the Spirit. It’s the normal Christian life in which we participate in the actual life of Christ.
ONLY REAL SUSBSTANCE
There is nothing insubstantial about God’s real-time participation in our life. “God incarnate in Christ draws near to us and draws us near to himself, cleansing us through his blood, sanctifying and healing us by the power of his Spirit, ransoming us from servitude to the world, delivering us from slavery into liberty, from darkness to light, thereby constituting us as a new priesthood and a special people belonging to himself for ever.” (2) With Christ as your life, you are a life-giver and life multiplier because you are alive with spirit and life.
* Namely the atonement/incarnation and mediation of Christ summed up as the vicarious humanity of Jesus.
(1)) Radcliff, Alexandra S.. The Claim of Humanity in Christ: Salvation and Sanctification in the Theology of T. F. and J. B. Torrance (Princeton Theological Monograph Series Book 222) (p. 3). Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.
(2) Myk Habets. Theosis in the Theology of Thomas Torrance. P 94.
IT’S CHRIST
Peace, joy and a Godly grace are found in Christ as our life, rather than in Christ as religion. While religion may be the package the contents/substance is Christ in you. Expressed as you.
When Paul states that ‘Christ is our life’ in Colossians, He is repeating what He has already said in Galatians 2.20,21. It’s what John means by ‘Christ come in our flesh’ which is another expression of ‘I am the Vine and you are the branches – meaning that we are a manifestation of Jesus Christ. Together we make up His Body. Incarnated with Jesus we are the Expression of Him in the world.
BEING SONS/DAUGHTERS
The fruit of the Spirit are none other than Christ in you manifest as you. This is the meaning of the Lord’s Table and the difference between our living in the letter that dulls and our living the reality of our inheritance – the state of being which is Christ come in George, Mavis and Syd.
HIS BURDEN IS LIGHT
Alexandra Radcliffe observes that, “The Torrance’s’ theology* offers a valuable corrective to the tremendous burden placed on people today by preaching and teaching that, whether blatantly or subtly, “throws people back upon themselves” to earn their relationship with God and to try to achieve by their own efforts the kind of person that they ought to be.” (1) Classically this is the heresy of Arminianism and more subtly it is a wide-spread form of sub-standard Christian belief.
YOU ARE THE EXPRESSION OF CHRIST
Christ expressed as Jill and Bob is the meaning of Christ our life in the post-cross age in which we live in Jesus Christ - having had our Adam put to death in Jesus and our real self-raised to life in Jesus.
Those who think that this is too airy-fairy to have real Christian substance might reflect on the fact that the Son of God manifested as Jesus of Nazareth. Fully God and one substance with God, the Son of God was incarnated as Jesus of Nazareth to live and teach among us and restore us to union with God. You have oneness with Christ now. This mystery realised as you is what we call life in the Spirit. It’s the normal Christian life in which we participate in the actual life of Christ.
ONLY REAL SUSBSTANCE
There is nothing insubstantial about God’s real-time participation in our life. “God incarnate in Christ draws near to us and draws us near to himself, cleansing us through his blood, sanctifying and healing us by the power of his Spirit, ransoming us from servitude to the world, delivering us from slavery into liberty, from darkness to light, thereby constituting us as a new priesthood and a special people belonging to himself for ever.” (2) With Christ as your life, you are a life-giver and life multiplier because you are alive with spirit and life.
* Namely the atonement/incarnation and mediation of Christ summed up as the vicarious humanity of Jesus.
(1)) Radcliff, Alexandra S.. The Claim of Humanity in Christ: Salvation and Sanctification in the Theology of T. F. and J. B. Torrance (Princeton Theological Monograph Series Book 222) (p. 3). Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.
(2) Myk Habets. Theosis in the Theology of Thomas Torrance. P 94.
