KNOWING LIFE FROM DEATH

In the Kingdom of God knowing is never separated from ‘being’. With Jesus Christ, He is what he offers and draws us into in Himself. This is why Christ is our life and the law plus Christ is not the Gospel. The latter is a pollution.

Whether we live in oneness with God or in the law and the knowledge of good and evil will determine whether we minister spirit and life or information. Our position in oneness with God or in separation from God results from what we think of as ‘spiritual knowing’. The Bible calls this ‘sound doctrine’ and ‘correctly discerning the word of truth’.

 ‘Knowing’ in Christ is different to knowing in Adam. In Christ knowledge is alive. It bears spirit and life. In Adam/Moses knowledge is words and is not alive. Words become alive when the Living Word is you. This is what it means to be in the spirit – which is identical to being one with God.

ALIVE WITH LIFE AND SPIRIT
Jesus is our life personally and the life of the world. In Jesus we are joined to the fellowship of the trinitarian God to enjoy in God, the perichoresis that is the substance of God’s fellowship of three persons, one God. Togetherness is the nature of God. In Christ’s Gospel it comes to us by the Spirit.

‘The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you--they are full of the Spirit and life’ John 6.63 NIV.
In religious mode, we may ascribe sacredness to things that are not sacred and define as unholy, things that are holy. This is because religion is part of the dichotomised world of the knowledge of good and evil with its many compartments of ascribed holiness and un-holiness. Compared to oneness with God these designations are illusory.

Only Christ in us has the power to change our lives for the better. Mass rallies against the evil of male violence towards women have minimal effect on perpetrators. Only Christ in us gives the capacity to love, be self-controlled and live with grace.
PROTO-PAGANISM
We can live a semi-pagan life in which we create our own ‘gods’ by personifying the forces of nature or idolising wealth or celebrated figures. The most subtle form of idolatry is found in creating god in our own image. We can construct our own christ out of bad experiences, fear and false doctrine. We can distort Christ by thinking of Him as subject to the law, so that we make a legalist out of Jesus. This is iniquity run amok.
FALSE ATTRIBUTION
We can attribute natures acts of carnage to the ‘wrath’ of God, which makes Him like some of us – bent on judgment and revenge. If we ignore Christ as the King, we lose our sovereignty over nature and ourselves. Jesus demonstrated that He had authority over nature – not just because He was God but because He was a man who lived in the authority that those who live in oneness with Father enjoy. It takes a collective oneness with God that we call the Kingdom of God to rule over nature. It takes the transformation of men to live with gentleness and grace and be a True Man.
AUTHORITY
Jesus ‘had authority not as the scribes’ due to oneness with His Father and as a human being who lived in union with His Father. In Jesus we are one with God and gain the capacity to exercise the ability to redeem the earth. This is the authority of the sons of God – an authority not accessible to the sons of the slave woman.
‘But what does Scripture say? "Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman's son’ Gal 4.30 NIV.
DRAWS ALL THING INTO HIMSELF
Since the cross all of life is the Kingdom of God. It always was, but in the cross the at-one-ment healed the fissure created by man’s distrust of God. The gap was healed in the man Christ Jesus, and it is today. Christ in us heals our distrust, fear and antipathy to God from the inside. The trinitarian oneness that Jesus has becomes ours in Jesus, the fall is undone, and the lies are dissolved.
NO SACRED AND SECULAR
Everything in the post cross life is spiritual. It has to be because we have been drawn into oneness with God. There is no sacred and secular today. No day is more holy than any other day. No garments more sacred than any other garment. In Christ you are holy. In Christ you have been given a healed, whole and holy life. It’s Christ in you, which means that Christ and His spirit and life have been let lose in the world through you. This is the solution to all social evils.
AGENCY OF BELONGING
“The presence of the Holy Spirit to the creation imports an openness on the part of God’s creation toward himself, for through the Spirit God is able to take possession of his creatures, to sustain them from below, and to be present within them in such a way as to lift them up to the level of participation in God where they are opened out for union and communion with God far beyond the limits of their creaturely existence. To be ‘in the Spirit’ is to be in God, for the Spirit is not external but internal to the Godhead.” (1)
ALIVE EVERY DAY
In Jesus Christ you have communion with God in your everyday living. Jesus is the mediator of the life of God to us. This is a mediation in which we receive the oneness with God that is God – that the trinity is in itself. In our oneness with God we have become mediators of life into marriage, family, society and the creation. The life of God is not something contained in church or within the construct of something we define as ‘religious.’ THE LIFE OF GOD SIMPLY IS. Christ has come in our flesh and by our flesh into our relationships and the world. This is the basis of authentic ministry and spiritual leadership. We must decide if we wish to be a Saruman or a Gandalf.
 
(1) Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (p. 153). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.