LEGALISM- FALSE CHRIST AND FALSE GOSPEL

I was raised in a faith community in which the new covenant was an unknown entity. If referenced at all the old covenant was considered to be the new covenant and still is in this system of belief. Here the Christ is seen as the mediator of the law rather than the Mediator of Himself into the spirit, soul and body of believers. In this construction ‘the law on your heart’ is rendered as Moses’ law on people’s hearts even though such a notion is the negation of the Gospel and scarcely Christianity. But God woven Himself into our being through the incarnation, which practically speaking is Christ our life.

DON’T KNOW WHY
Many Christians assert that they are not legalists and are not bound by the law. They are correct about that. But do they know why? In brief His gift to us is not a clever way of doing the knowledge of good and evil. It’s about life – about life without limit in His life.

THE SPIRIT COME IN OUR FLESH
The saved do not live in lawlessness because they are not in Moses’ laws. Christ life has become their life via incarnation. This is life in the Spirit. This igniting of humanity by the indwelling person of Jesus Christ was foreshadowed in the burning bush, lived in the Christ of God among us and re-proclaimed on the Mount when Jesus glowed white with glory in His transfiguration.

God was manifested in Jesus in His life and vividly portrayed on the Mount, to illustrate what we are becoming in the mediation of Christ – an expression of the divine nature in Ben and Jill. This was Jeremiah’s prophecy of the ‘laws on their hearts’. It was a metaphor of a greater reality: Christ come in our flesh to manifest as us and the Body as the Face of Christ lived.

We are talking oneness with God. To think of heaven invading earth as signs and wonders alone is to miss the main point. The Christ incarnated Church is heaven invading earth in marriage family, industry and society. It’s a nonsense to speak heaven invading earth if we are content to promote an exploitative economy.
MISSED TARGET
Catholics deviate from the truth when they insist on transubstantiation. God does not manifest as the bread and the wine. He manifests in you and as you. You are the manifestation of Christ. This is the meaning of Christ come in the flesh. The Lord’s Table celebrates this fact and reminds us to live in the incarnation and not in the law and the flesh. God come as Jesus of Nazareth is not just a clever God trick. The purpose and end-point is Christ come in you and I to be expressed as you and us. This is the living way of overcoming the supine church of dead folks talking.
THE MEDIATION OF CHRIST IN YOU IS DIRECT
To live moralism or religion or legalism of any kind is to deny yourself direct union with Christ. It suffocates the glory that is yours as a son/daughter and  leaves your talent in the ground while muttering ‘You are a hard man.’ Jesus desires to reap what He has sown into your life in Himself.
The new covenant is the very person of Christ worked into the flesh and blood of you.
MADE MANIFEST IN YOU
Thomas Torrance observes that, “By its very nature the covenant envisaged that God's laws would be put into the minds and written on the hearts of his people. That is to say, the covenanted way of response had to be worked into the very flesh and blood of Israel's existence. It had to be impregnated in its understanding and sculptured into its very being. It had to be built into the reciprocity between God and Israel and be allowed to control the whole pattern of its life and mission in history.” (1) This has been realised as Christ in you and because of Him, the Trinity in us.
NOT AN ABSTRACTION
Oneness in the self and with others starts with oneness with God. It’s you being YOU IN CHRIST AS YOUR TRUE SELF AS AN EXPRESSION OF CHRIST.
The law, the temple and the old covenant were always external to the Believer. Following the cross, atonement and Pentecost we are woven into God and God becomes part of us by the Spirit. God and humanity are woven together in Jesus Christ. In Jesus we are made one with Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God in Christ has reached out from the God-head and enveloped us in God.
‘Realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’  John 14.20.
NOT COMPLICATED
Godliness and the peace/joy that comes with it is simpler than many know. Because it is less what you do and more who you are. It’s about being. Being one with God. In the new covenant we are part of the new and living way in which the oneness with God that has been gifted us by God places us in the joy of trinitarian life and embeds the holiness of God in our being. This our joining to the Vine in Jesus Christ. ‘Be holy as God is holy’ is no longer a pipe dream because God is one with us and we are one with God in Jesus. In this perichoresis hidden with God, yet fully ourselves as daughters and sons growing into our glory as agents of the Kingdom and as a result giving glory to God.
ALREADY INCLUDED
‘That all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—  I in them and you in me’ John 17.21-23 NIV. Lived union with God is the difference between religion and the Kingdom Jesus began.
(1)    Thomas Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, p.75.