LIFE AND TRUTH IS JESUS CHRIST

The notion that a Christian community has the truth, has special knowledge in addition to the Bible witness is the essence of Gnosticism. Transformation does not occur as a result of something special any group has. It happens when Christ comes in our flesh and makes us gracious people as the expression of Jesus Christ.

Any christ who is seen to uphold and promote the law is not the Christ of God.

JESUS IS REGENERATION AND LIFE

Jesus was not a member of the left or the right. He was Life as Himself. No political identity can capture who Jesus was – but disciples of the left or the right can deny Him even when they tout their Christianity.

Secular morality is mostly issues based. The method of securing transformation in this sphere is contained in externalities – changing situations, educating people, manipulating them, doing a social media pile-on or  calling moral perspectives ‘phobias,’ in a sly form of manipulation. Political correctness is a secular brand of legalism it’s a politicised version of ethics based on the knowledge of good and evil. In this mode people become a political construct. In legalism mode we become a religious construct. Sadly, not really a full person. Certainly not our true self. Genuine humanity and the Way ahead is found in Christ. Hidden in Him we become fully human and fully alive.

OUR LIFE HUB
Gregory Boyd observes, “Our central job is not to solve the world’s problems. Our job is to draw our entire life from Christ and manifest that life to others. Nothing could be simpler—and nothing could be more challenging.” 

This needs to be so in the church before it can be realised in the world. Unless we are intent on living from the life of Christ incarnated in us, our efforts as Christians will have little effect. Just like methods of social manipulation and control have no lasting effect.
It’s a tragedy that male violence has infected the potentially intimate and most fulfilling aspect of our lives. We might try to fix this by blaming men in a dualistic mode of ‘wokism’. Or we might try to be different people as the expression of Christ come in our flesh.

WHERE IS LOVE AND LIFE?
Either Christ is our life, or we are not alive. A neglected Christ results in degraded persons and degraded institutions. Unless the necessity of Christ come in our flesh is taken seriously by the church and society the chaos will get worse,  not better. Instead of the New Creation Kingdom of God we will have the dystopia of the Land of the Orcs.

INCARNATION - CHRIST AS US

Paul’s statement ‘Christ our life’ is not just about personal transformation. In these words, are found the key to the undoing of the current political stagnation, the populist attraction to stupidity and the futility of every reform and ideology outside of Christ. A most common Kingdom Counterfeit is Christianity as an ideology. What His Kingdom is, is Christ our life personally and collectively.
This becomes reality by incarnation. Never by legalism or by law.

CULTURAL LEGALISM
Not all Christians live in overt legalism. Many however, live in a cultural legalism of expectation and conformity to what Christians should be. Or a contract supposedly between them and Christ. Moralism is an example of this. But latent legalism is more subtle because it is grounded in that which is really a Christian version of the knowledge of good and evil – which is what Jesus has delivered us from. To get out of this we need to step into Christ as a state of being.

When I was young, a colleague was fond of saying that Christianity is a lifestyle. Not really. It’s an incarnation.
THE ISSUE
The issue of life is no about people keeping the law but our living in what is ours: Inclusion in the trinity. Included people are sons/daughters of God.
The futility and the ‘missing the mark’ nature of a law construed gospel can be seen when we consider the nature of the trinity, the relations between the trinity and consider what this means for individuality, personhood, salvation and Godliness. They are alive and multipliers of life. In Christ this life is shared with us.
ABSTRACTION VERSUS BEING
While the law is an abstraction the trinity is a living entity. The trinity is God. The trinity is participation in each other and total individuality. This is why real Godliness is God’s participation in you.

Whereas the law is an abstraction and a figment of separation from God under the knowledge of good and evil, the trinity is the nature and the communion that is God as Godself. It is His nature revealed in the saving of us by our enfolding in God in Jesus Christ. Our reality now is that we are included in God in Christ.
ORDER GROUNDED IN TRINITY
When Paul speaks of the law of the spirit of life he is not talking of the words on stone. He means the life of the trinitarian God and the relationships and purpose that flow from this Communion. This communion is manifested in the person of Jesus Christ: Logos. In a manner of speaking the universe is the expression of God while Jesus Christ is the express image of God’s being.
Personhood and relationship in Christ, is the alpha and omega of life.

TRINITARIAN ASPECTS
Thomas Torrance observes that, “No divine Person is who he is without essential relation to the other two, and yet each divine Person is other than and distinct from the other two. They are intrinsically interrelated not only through the fact that they have one Being in common so that each of them is in himself whole God, but also in virtue of their differentiating characteristics as Father, Son, or Holy Spirit which hypostatically intertwine with one another and belong constitutively to their indivisible unity within the Trinity.
There is an indivisible and continuous relation of being between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit so that the Being of the Godhead is understood to be whole or complete not in the Father only but in the Son and in the Holy Spirit as well.” (1) This kind of relationship with God is yours in Jesus Christ.
CROSSROADS
Nevertheless, it is Jesus Christ who is the Saviour of humanity. Jesus’ whose cross is the dividing line between Adam and Jesus Christ and Jesus who joins us to the Family of God by making His oneness with God our oneness with God.
At the same time our salvation has been achieved by the Enterprise of the trinity. God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. Dallas Willard aptly names this The Divine Conspiracy.
IT’S NOT THE LAW
The trinity is the hub of the universe, of individuality and community and the life hub of the new creation. The real Theory of Everything if your like.
Indeed, in Him, we live, move and have our being as persons, societies, ecologies and environments. This was perceived by thinkers of many faiths before the arrival of the Christ. It is made plain today by the reality of Christ in us when we are the expression of God rather than the expression of political correctness or religion. If as a denomination you have made yourself a child of the law, you have made yourself small.
Christ’s incarnation in us is better expressed as us when we live naked to Him rather than clothed in laws and rites and the garments of Adam and Moses. Don’t insulate yourself from God by self-made clothes and idolatrous additions. Live the oneness with Christ that He has already given you.
 
(1) Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (p. 157). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.