LUXURY IN CHRIST OUR LIFE

We have this luxury of living in Christ. This is not living in Christianity. It is Christ our life – the state of being in which we and Jesus are one.

‘On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ John 14.20. This is the day that we are reborn as a new creation into the new creation. It’s the day that we become sons/daughters in reality rather than just in name.

THE LESSER LIFE
If we are tied to Moses, we are still living in Adam in the auspices of the knowledge of good and evil. We can live a religious life from this position but not a spiritual life. We can exude drops of life in this penitentiary due to grace, but never rivers of spirit and life. Any imagined advance on this foundation inevitably gives way to decay because it is not founded in the limitless life that is Christ our life.

‘He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit’ Titus 3.5 NIV.
LINES
Living in the new covenant, the bottom line and the top line is spirit and life. It’s the alpha and omega of life without limit. In the old covenant the bottom line is death. The deeper we allow ourselves to be drawn into Christ our life, the more alive we become. The deeper we burrow into any law-based gospel the more we are denuded of life by the spirit of death.
MINISTERS OF SOMETHING AND NOTHING
We can minister, quite conscientiously in the old covenant handing out bits and pieces of the knowledge of good and evil. We might conjure up a theme for the occasion and delivers some disembodied elements of faith - when we could have been faith itself. We could have been one with Father, releasing a river of spirit and life because we are life - life because we and Father are one.
This is what it means to be a minister of the new covenant – ‘not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life’ 2 Cor 3.6 NIV.  
JESUS AND FATHER
Jesus was not one with His Father because He had an anointing. He was one with Father because He and Father were of the one substance: God. Jesus lived not from the law but from His Father. The oneness that was His, revealed Father in spirit and in truth and enabled Him to live spirit and life because He was spirit and life.
ROOTED IN GOD
Jesus is the vine who roots us in God. According to Thomas Torrance, ‘God is being Himself’, which is why Paul is able to say that ‘In Him we have our being’ and why John declares that ‘Through Him all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that has been made.  In Him was life, and that life was the light of men.’
The plight of the fundamentalist is that he has words without being. A creature of the letter he has no root and therefore very diminished fruit – other than moralism and taking refuge in ‘positions.’
AUTHENTIC BEING/AUTHENTIC YOU
Being and authentic life go together. Distorted being gives rise to separated and disjointed life. In Jesus we participate in the Being of God. One with Him we know ourselves and are ourselves.
Satan created havoc by projecting a delusionary deficient being onto the sons of God, who while sons, suffered severe damage to their identity. But in Jesus the oneness and integrity of being that Jesus and Father possessed became our union with God. Jesus is our union with Father. We are on account of Jesus incarnated with the trinity. This is the spirit of sonship in spirit and in truth. It’s a function of the Spirit, never of the law because law is the effect of Adamic separation.
MIRACLES ARE NOT THE GOSPEL
Oneness with God is the miracle that validates all other miracles. The healing of eyes and limbs is the advertisement for the healing of our God-wound: separation from God. They are pointers to renewed oneness with God.
WHY THE NEW TESTAMENT IS NEW
There were miracles in pre-cross times. Very stunning ones. But no human lived in oneness with God. Not until the atonement had been made and the incarnation had become the possession of the sons of God. Jesus achieved what He had prayed for in John 17 – that we may possess the interwoveness that He and His Father possessed.
THE GIFTS ARE NOT LIFE IN THE SPIRIT
Life in the Spirit is not the gifts of the Spirit. Life in the Spirit is union with God.
We need to know that one can minister spiritual gifts without being in the Spirit. The main reason that sincere people are not in the Spirit is because they are still in the law – still in the realm of separation from God. Not objectively but in their minds. We are in the law if we are attached to one law or all of them.
FULLNESS OF TIME
There was no life in the Spirit before the cross, because there had been no incarnation – even when people had anointings. Jesus declared that ordinary folks who took His name were greater than John the Baptist and greater than all the men and women of God who had come before. Greater because in Jesus, we and the Father are one.
SEPARATION UNDONE
Irenaeus wrote, ‘Jesus Christ, in His infinite love, has become what we are, in order that He may make us entirely what He is.’
Jesus prayed ‘The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me’ John 17.22,23. NIV.
Jesus urged us to ‘Realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ John 14.20. This makes our spirits alive and effective agents of Christ’s life.