NOT SLOPPY JOE
18/01/23 16:07
Joe liked to sit under a tree and read His Bible. It was a good habit and helped prepare him for the day. It also made him Biblically literate, which is to say he was grounded in God’s facts. As yet he was not fully informed about the incarnation - the aspect of the new covenant that eliminates the secular / sacred dichotomy and affirms that Christ is all and in all.
Holy Spirit rides on the incarnation - the indwelling of God in all that is - in every piece of time, every bit of space and every situation. This is to say that God is just as much with you under the Hills Hoist hanging up your undies as He is in a praise and worship service. In the New Testament age worship is a life and it is spirit and truth because the validity and holiness of all you do is CHRIST IN YOU and more. It is Christ as you.
To say Christ as you and believe it is to live in the incarnation as the directed expression in your person of the trinity living in you. Religion always places a barrier and some form of insulation between you and Christ. The Kingdom is the the trinity expressed as George and Mildred. This is the difference between the person who has none or only one talent and the person who has five.
BIBLE AND CHRIST IN YOU
The pastor presented a part of the real Gospel in his bid to set people free into Christ. Pamela responded, ‘I’d sooner believe what the Bible says.’ The trouble was that what Pamela believed was not what the Bible says. It was what the sect she belonged to had distorted it to say. The Bible when it presents another gospel produces blind people and blind guides.
The Bible is irreplaceable as an account of God’s truth revealed through men and women of God. But it is subordinate to the Holy Spirit, the Son and our Father as our tutors and educators in the art of being human and being sons of God.
God is in you and with you. If you are astute enough to make Jesus your life - and not just have your religion in a box that you get out at weekends to do your religious motions - Jesus will instruct you in everything you do. Every experience you have will not only be enjoyable in itself but the Lord will teach you about life and its possibilities in Him.
SET FREE FROM GOD-TALK
Not only will you be joined with the law of the spirit of life that flows in the universe. You will be set free from mental clichés, particularly religious ones to gain a level of penetrating insight that is called spiritual discernment. You may have noticed that people who do not possess spiritual discernment are not discerning about anything. So knowing God in person enables us to know the world and gain understanding instead of going about bumping into objects like one of the Three Stooges.
Living in the new covenant – Christ as you – equips us to interpret the Bible as God intends. Christ in you protects you from cunningly devised fables, flaky spirituality and prophets promoting the doctrines of demons. This is to say we are equipped to accurately interpret the word of truth.
STRUCTURES OF DELUSION
Whole belief systems can be made to hang on a selection of Bible verses. Except that the Bible was not written as verses at all. It was written as stories of historical events, prophecies and utterances of the prophets and apostles in their teaching about God and human beings.
Paul in conveying God’s truth usually presents the gospel of life in whole books, most of which are letters. The theme and argument of His gospel is found in the whole body of his work. Paul’s gospel is Christ’s gospel and along with John’s gospel should be seen as lucid accounts of what God has done for us in Jesus. Any gospel that differs from this did not come from God.
TRUTH
The whole is always greater than the sum of the parts. What is The whole in the New Testament age? The whole – which is the one accurate hermeneutic (lens) by which Bible truth is known is the new covenant. What is the new covenant? By agreement among the Holy Trinity, human beings are guaranteed union with God in the person of Jesus Christ. This is the new covenant.
But not only this. Christ is our life. His is our life as our grace in person. He is our life to become us by incarnation. Theologians call this the vicarious humanity of Jesus. But wait. There’s more!
SONSHIP
The Spirit of Jesus manifest in our flesh BECOMES US. We become sons in whose lives are seen victory over addictions, healing of physical and emotional wounds, growth in personal holiness and the development of the Kingdom Culture that is the new creation. The new creation is the new societies that Jesus envisages among the nations. It is what we will come to know as the New Earth.
‘Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation’ Gal 6.15 NIV.
NOT THE LAW RE-INVENTED
There is no list delineating the new covenant because the new covenant is a relationship. It is union with God won by Jesus Christ and guaranteed by Christ as our life. Nevertheless there are scriptures that denote its essence such as ‘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 NIV. There are others like, ‘I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’ Gal 2.20 NIV.
CHRIST FOR YOU AND AS YOU
Christ’s life is your life. There is nothing more simple and nothing more profound. It’s certainly more simple and effective as the way of Godliness than attempting to live from the law and various elements of church culture. It’s the living way in which God becomes you and you become a son in spirit and in truth.
BLIND GUIDES
Be sceptical of any ‘gospel’ founded on ‘Bible studies’ that join together a series of unrelated bible scriptures. Especially if they project a different christ and a non-gospel as if this Christ is the Christ of God and this ‘other gospel’ is the gospel of the Kingdom. Legalism denies Christ as our life. It suffocates what would have been our humanity had the son of man been expressed as us. We are imprisoned in the law if we make a thing of one law or ten laws. Jesus has already set captives free, so live in His freedom!
MISGUIDED READING
Pseudo-gospels can be supported by Bible study and the dodgy connecting of texts. “Bible verses are often used by church people as though they were pieces of a jigsaw picture puzzle. You might think the pieces would be required to fit perfectly in order to create the picture, but such is not the case. It’s not difficult to cut and paste verses of Scripture together to fit a particular mindset, assumption, or point of view. Simply pull enough verses out of context, make them appear to be in sync, and you’ll be able to create a picture of some kind. Much like those connect-the-dot puzzles we played as children, as long as you can at least make it look like the dots are connected in the right order, you can draw whatever picture you want.” (1)
We can utilize disconnected jig-saw pieces to support fictions that we are unwilling to let go of. But if we do let them go, by taking these beliefs and false identities to the cross, we will enter a new realm of freedom. We will have been born again and become sons of God not just notionally but in spirit and in truth.
(1) Kapler, Michael C.. Clash Of The Covenants: Escaping Religious Bondage Through The Grace Guarantee (Kindle Locations 240-245). Kindle Edition.
