HAVE THE TRUE CHRIST
21/04/24 11:37
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“THERE CAN BE NO CHRISTIANITY without Christ. There can be no Christian doctrine without Christology. And there can be no future for a church that does not take seriously the dogmatic task of thinking through the implications of the biblical and ecclesiastical traditions and what they say about the person and work of Christ in order to equip the church for today and tomorrow.” (a)
Having a pure heart is no help when you think you are flying to London, when your flight is actually going to LA. Having a faith is no help when the christ that is yours is false and the gospel you clutch is bent.
RUSTED ON SUPPORTERS
There are Electors who vote the same way all their lives, these ‘rusted on’ supporters can give un-thinking support where it is not deserved. Whether or not the supported party practises good policy or descends into idiocy is irrelevant to them. They vote like robots with only one program. As Believers we are called by Christ to spurn the darkness and respond to the Light. Thinking through is essential to a Godly life. Especially is this so in regard to that which we call sound doctrine.
The Christian Message is never about manipulation and control. It’s not about abstractions or ideology. It is unadulterated life in Jesus Christ. It’s Christ our life.The difference between religion and spirit and life in Christ is incarnation – you in oneness with Christ, courtesy of Jesus. You already have it. Just live the Lord’s Table.
REAL GOSPEL
There are gospels in which it is hinted or asserted that we get accepted by God by making ourselves worthy of acceptance. They are quite common and are commonly misguided. A long-time Christian lady told me once that intimacy with Christ is earned by good works. Wrong. Another, a preacher of a more enlightened message declared that ‘Jesus receives you as you are. Not as you should be.’ You do not earn Christ. But Christ has earned you.
Jesus has undone Adam’s separation. All are atoned for and belong. But it’s up to us accept this invitation and agree with Jesus that His oneness with God is ours. Christ has included you in all that is His – His relationship with Father and Holy Spirit. Just agree with Him. That’s obedience.
FREEDOM
Jesus did not live a life of luxury and ease. He suffered rejection intensely because He was truth and life in person. Jesus participated in our life – in the sorrow and the joy. Vicariously He is our life – the living way of joy and the healer of pain and sorrow in this life and the reality of eternal life in person.
God’s aim is to secure our belonging and enjoy our company. That’s His passion. The effect of our adoption is a joy in living, a freedom to be ourselves and the gradual setting free from a self that has been a captive to addictions, degradations and false views of the self and of life. For some, the knowing of Christ involves the undoing of false gospels, a false cosmology and the jettisoning of a religion that is actually a Christianised form of the knowledge of good and evil.
NON-IRRITATING RELIGION
It’s curious that the religious are the most irrigated by a non-religious Christ-life. As fundamentalist Christians, non-believers can find us irritating. With Christ 0ur life we are simply life-giving persons as an uncontrived self. Christ live through our humanity.
Holiness is not religiosity and Godliness is not piety. It’s belief of the kind in which we allow God to be His life as us. We cannot pull ourselves out of a hole by our whiskers. Self-achieved goodness is a myth held dear by the world and the misguided Christian. Your starting point is not separation from God. It’s union with God. Live from this position and you will grow into a genuinely holy and life-giving person.
HAS BECOME ONE WITH US
Torrance writes, “How abysmal and desperate the lost condition of man is, may be discerned in the fact that it needed nothing short of the Lord God himself to become one with us in our sin and death in order to redeem and save mankind. Far from the Gospel being empty of reality the fact that Jesus Christ is the incarnation within our alienated human being and perishing existence of the eternal Son of the eternal Father means that the message of reconciliation, salvation and redemption does indeed have divine content and eternal validity.” (1)
GODLINESS
It does have eternal validity. It’s not the addition of church, the adoption of a holy day or the performance of some charitable work that makes us Godly. It Christ as us that makes us Godly. Wholeness and holiness is far less what you do and entirely who you are. In a half gospel you can be a worker, in a ‘no gospel at all’ you can be slave. In a law perverted gospel you can be an irritation. With Christ as your life you can be a manifestation of Him – a river of living water.
(a) Oliver Crisp and Fred Sanders, Christology, Ancient and Modern Explorations in Constructive. P 13.
(1) Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (p. 142). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
