REALITY MAKE US ALIVE
20/12/24 13:41
IT’S ADVENT
Many Christians think Godliness is ‘being moral.’ It’s not being immoral. But the truth is that Godliness is ‘being you’ in Christ. There is nothing whole person about living as a moral construct. Godliness is living out sonship/daughtership as expressions of Christ. This is our life in the Spirit. Jesus came to replicate Himself in us. This whole person is us when Christ is our life’
CHRIST IN YOU
Myk Habets notes that, “According to Torrance, forgiveness is not just a word of pardon but a word translated into our existence by crucifixion and resurrection, by judgement and re-creation; it means the sinner is now given a right standing before God and is holy – justified. The believer is even now holy in Christ.” We are talking here of the spirituality of being – of our actual positioning in Christ rather than theologies of the law/letter that suffocate spirit and life.
God’s life is not constricted to notions of good and evil. It’s life without limit – which is ours in Jesus Christ. Let’s be clear. If we have a religion of law we have the religion that Christ left behind at the cross – Adam’s culture of attempting to be like God on his own.
BREAD OF LIFE BECOMES YOU
We can, if we have been raised in an ideological form of Christianity, think that the sentiments expressed in the worship song ‘Isn’t He’ are not the real thing. For some christianity is an argument, a debate and an energetic propping up of a non-gospel.
For many it is a religion. But, real Godliness is an incarnation. We can if we are too casual, live less than our inheritance in Christ. The vicarious humanity of Jesus means that Jesus is for us, represents us and becomes us by the Spirit in our everyday life. He has justification and sanctification covered. He is making you glorified as the True You as a manifestation of Himself.
TRUTH IS LIFE
We can know the truth that sets us free if we advance into knowing Christ as we are known by Christ. We become astute in interpreting the world and are set free from muffled and confused interpretations of what is taking place around us. Sure, we don’t know everything, but we grow in being people of wisdom and discernment. Seeing in Christ brings ‘seeing’ to all of life. We are protected from the ignorance of populism and associated conspiracy theories.
GROW IN CHRIST – or not
Some people get duller with age. Others become more personable and astute because they have grown out of religion into Christ their life. Yet others just fade out and become a dead tree because they will not abandon gospels that are no gospel at all. This means they slowly die in their spirit before their body is dead.
It pays to know the true story of our ‘God-life’ rather than stumble along in a subverted gospel or outright lies posing as ‘a perspective’. Satan precipitated the fall by suggesting a false narrative. He still does. You can choose to be part of a lie or included in Christ. The truth is, however, that even if contained in a lie you are in Christ’s Truth. The key is to live in the rich reality that you have in Him.
COMMON ILLUSION
People can see themselves as separate from God and see their life aim as to become accepted by, loved by God and one with God. So, they make this OVERCOMING SEPARATION the project of their Christianity. But they are already included by Christ’s atonement.
NOT SEPARATED
We are not separated. The at-one-ment of the cross joined the whole world to God. Those who live in this union with God are those who believe they do as their way of life – because their ‘way’ is not some self-effort but the living way of Christ Himself.
Trusting Christ means living in His union with God. It means living from where He has positioned us in the communion of God. So, our role is less about receiving Christ and more about living in the union with God that He has won for us. Jesus said those who love Him believe Him. The result is that the trinity take up residence in our being. The other side of the coin is that we are included in God’s Communion. ‘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.
WIDE WAY IS EARNING SALVATION
Since the cross the world is not separated from God – unless it chooses to be or mistakenly believes itself to be separated. Jesus has gained for us oneness with God of the kind that He enjoys in the communion of the trinity. This oneness depends on Him – not you being as you know you need to be. It’s Grace as the Person of Jesus.
ONE WITH GOD IN JESUS
This is a very close oneness and inclusion indeed. Jesus declared this inheritance for all when He said, ‘I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 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—so that they may be brought to complete unity’ John 17.20-23 NIV.
Christ is not only with you when you are in your prayer chair or on missionary work. He is not only with you when His Presence manifests or there is some miracle. As Jesus promised He is in us and with us always.
NOT ORPHANS
While oneness with God has been secured for all - it becomes the possession of those who believe in Jesus and His promise to never leave us as orphans. Jesus is the Door to oneness with God in this life and in eternal life. But it is not gained by performing for Jesus. It is ours in Jesus. Christ is our life in every way. He is our relationship with God and the expression of Himself in us as Godliness.
YOU ARE THERE
How shall we be right with God? There are no pre-requisites. You are not in double jeopardy having to ‘get right with God’ and then to land this ‘get right with Christ.’ Jesus is you in relation to Himself and to the trinity. This is what Paul means when he speaks of Christ our life (Col 3.4). The potential of Christ our life for us is limitless.
CHRIST AS YOU
Theologians have called this, ‘the vicarious humanity of Christ’ which is a definitive description of Jesus as Living Grace. Thomas Torrance puts it this way. “In Jesus the final response of man toward God was taken up, purified through his atoning self-consecration on our behalf, and incorporated into the Word of God as his complete self-communication to mankind, but also as the covenanted way of vicarious response to God which avails for all of us and in which we all may share through the Spirit of Jesus Christ which he freely gives us.” (1) It avails for all of us and we may share in it by believing Jesus and resting in the truth of our oneness with God.
STEPS TO YOU
Baxter Kruger explains the difference between earning Christ and entering Christ’s life when he writes, ‘It’s not about us receiving Christ. It’s about us being received into Christ’s life in Christ. This is the difference between our inheritance in Christ and notions like ‘Keeping close to Jesus.’ You are in Christ, Christ is in you. He has come in your flesh to bring glory to your life in the body. Christ come in all of us is the Body of Christ. This is the Body of Christ that is the advancing new creation Kingdom of God.
WRONG WAY
A pastor once took me to task for my lack of enthusiasm about the learning of doctrinal texts. He said that if you were in prison and had no Bible, you would have nothing to rely on without recourse to your memorised scriptures. Sadly, he had no concept of life in the Spirit - of Jesus being with us and in us as a living way of life. His kind of religion was made up almost entirely of ‘things you do’. Christ is with you when you are in prison and when you are hanging out the washing. He is with us personally and woven into our being. In Christ the trinity is in you and you are in the trinity.
YOU – THE MANIFEST PRESENCE
Some teachers write about ‘receiving the presence’ and ‘getting in the presence’. There is a manifest presence. But the most remarkable manifest presence since the cross is you. The Living Word is Christ and the fruitful you is Christ come in our flesh. Christ is incarnated in all who believe. This is our foundation and starting point. The incarnated presence is not a wind but a state of being. It’s you in Christ and Christ in you and more. This is the trinity in you.
The basic sense of heaven invading earth is you living in the eucharist as a living way of life. You are not separated from God unless you think you are. Even then you are not separated because your mind is out of sync with the mind and achievement of God for you in Christ. Live in the reality you have been given. Reality really is Christ. Religion is the shadow of the real. It takes up a lot of space but has a faint substance. We are real in Christ our life and agents of the Kingdom Jesus began.
(1) Thomas Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, p.78.