IN COMPANY WITH GOD
23/12/24 08:16
We are never alone in our aloneness. We are in the company of Christ and because of Him we are in the company of Father and Holy Spirit. The intimacy that the trinity have with each other is the intimacy that they have with you and with us in every situation, on every day and in every place. They are with us and in us on account of Jesus Christ. In Jesus we have a Sabbath Life.
GOD DESIRES US
Thomas Torrance writes that, “It is only from the incarnate condescension of God’s immeasurable love to be one with us and his unreserved self-giving in love for us that we come to know God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit toward us, [and] through the Communion of the Spirit our knowing of him in this evangelical or economic way is lifted up and grounded in the transcendent Life and personal Being of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit in himself.
“Thomas A. Smail has expressed the essential point well: The doctrine of the Trinity does not lay an irreverent philosophical mystery on top of a simple scriptural gospel; it simply makes explicit what is implicit in the biblical gospel, in order to defend it against the philosophical attacks that are made upon it.
“The root of the doctrine of the Trinity is the same insight that in Jesus we have to do with one who is not only on our side as creature, but on God’s side as Creator.
“He is of one being (homoousios) with the Father and so belongs to God’s life and not only to ours, but he brings his relationship with the Father into earthly revelation and action for our salvation.” (1)
IN YOU AND WITH YOU
Christ came in the flesh in Palestine and He comes in your flesh every day. Jesus lives in you by the Spirit to be your life. “We come to see that salvation is not achieved by retributive justice, but by [our]participating in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Salvation is literally found “in Christ,” as Paul says over and over. With Paul’s gospel liberated from a conflation with the false gospel of the teachers, it becomes much bigger, bolder, better, and ultimately, far more universal—it is a gospel proclaiming salvation for Jews as Jews, and for gentiles as gentiles.”(2) Christ is for you and He lives in to be your best you who is alive in His life and one of the Family of God.
(1) Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (p. 33). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
(2) Campbell, Douglas; DePue, Jon. Beyond Justification: Liberating Paul’s Gospel (pp. 26-27). Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.