NOT A LOTTERY
13/12/24 13:20
Paul asserted that the Kingdom of God is not ‘yes and no’. It’s yes and yes. The Kingdom of God is union with God. Jesus has authority that was real and different to the scribes because He and His Father were one. You can have authority that is real, not notional but with ‘agency’ because you and our Father are one in Jesus. Oneness comes from the completed at-one-ment and the mediation of Christ. Real life is yes and yes because Jesus has joined us to the yes-life of God.
WITHOUT AUTHORITY
Many Believers think that a non-moralistic, non-legalistic, not jumping through hoops gospel is not the gospel of Christ because it is not the gospel in which they have been socialised. Basically, it’s not difficult enough or not contractual enough for them. I have met reasonably well-off families, middle class people who think they are poor because they were raised in poor families. In their present life they are still convinced that they are poor, and they live like misers when they have more than enough. It’s called a poverty mentality.
THE STARTING LINE IS UNION WITH GOD
There is a brand of Christianity like that. It crosses all denominations. You can see the look of suspicion in their eyes when you tell them that the common moralism often purveyed by high profile pastors is not the gospel of Christ. His Gospel is that He is our life and that we belong. The issue of first instance is that atonement has been made and that we have been made one with God.
ENTITLEMENT RELIGION
A sense of entitlement and the burden of warped doctrine makes some reject this. People think they have earned the grace of Christ. You can see it in their eyes. Not only are they content to live in the mediocrity of their un-realised lives. They are content to live in the illusion that they are fulfilled and holy. They are suspicious of intimations of an extravagant life in Christ.
People join legalistic denominations because they look legitimate. The give the impression of earning salvation – all the more so if they can be formularised.
Some are stuck in their law-based dogma because, to them, rules have the appearance of substance. But in regard to Godliness their precepts are a vapour and they leave the law addict with no choice but to define holiness tritely as precepts that can be easily kept. For instance some are glued to sabbath-keeping as if this is their ‘grace.’ These iconic behaviours are no more efficacious than wearing a burka.
AN INDULGENT GOD?
Jeff Turner writing of this ‘make your own grace’ phenomenon observes that earlier in His Christian life, “I would have told you that [the] author [of such ideas] presented God as being far too loving, kind, patient, compassionate, and merciful, and that he makes Him look far too much like Jesus than the angry, OCD rule-master whom I bowed to. I would have suggested that this “Jeff Turner character”, whoever he was, obviously had some secret sin issues he was seeking to find an excuse for indulging in, or that perhaps he was simply seeking popularity by adding artificial sweetener to the message of the Gospel. I’d have no doubt counted him among what I perceived as being an emerging group of heretics.” You can see it in their eyes.
THE WAR
There’s a line in the first episode of an episode of Star Trek Discovery: ‘You are the hope’. When Christ is our life we are the hope of the Kingdom of God. Incarnated with Christ we are the hope and the reality of the advance of the New Creation. But living from law and religion the best we can claim is that ‘We were there.’
THE SUBTLE OPPOSITION
There is a war being waged against fullness in Christ. Its source is the pit and its disciples are the religious. The self-entitled and self-graced are ‘ungraced,’ are anti-grace and anti-life. The murder of the Lord of Life on the cross is the ultimate extension of anti-life attitudes that have infected all who live their lives in Adam instead of embracing Christ as their life. It’s a deep-seated anti-life attitude that is called iniquity. It’s iniquity because it's an inclination towards death in the name of life. Religious and political negativism a both a variety of death. They originate in the spirit of antichrist.