SEPARATIONISM AND SIN
01/03/24 13:54
This post is about the primal transgression and its cure. Sin is much more than transgression of the law. It’s the abrogation of the law of the spirit of life – which was never words on stone but the relationship of oneness that was ours before the fall. Deep sin is separation from God. Fullness of life is union with God.We are talking the kind of oneness that is the trinity and the similar oneness that is now ours in Christ as sons and daughters of God.
IN CHRIST
The words ‘in Christ’ are far more than a pious utterance. They refer to the vicarious humanity of Christ by which He represents us to God entirely and by which all that is His becomes ours.
PRIMAL SIN
Sin is what people do in separation from God. The most subtle and pernicious sin is to think to earn union with God, when only God can create union with God. Thus to assert that something like the religious icon is rest for human restlessness when Christ alone is rest for human restlessness is misguided and a lie. Rest for human restlessness is ours in union with God – which is what we have. You have the oneness with Christ that Eucharist represents. As the bread and wine become you so Christ has become you.
DEEDS
The fact of accounted righteousness is very old. ‘Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.’ Abraham’s belief in God was graced to him in the coming Messiah.
This does not mean that we can give ourselves over to a dissolute life. It means that a righteous life comes from a relationship with God, from a relationship of oneness already ours. Doing good and abstaining from evil does not make us Godly. Through the cross, God has made us Godly by drawing near and drawing us into Himself. Sons in spirit and in truth do sons of God things because this is the state of their being.
PRIMAL SIN
The primal transgression was to disbelieve God and believe a lie. But the transgression was not just in the lie. It was being seduced into a lesser view of God and lesser view of ourselves that resulted in separation from God.
We were not abandoned by God. But we lost the oneness with God that the trinity intended to be ours. The oneness that they enjoyed together.
LIE EMBRACED
This is to say that the primal sin was believing the lie that Father was not enough and that we were not enough – that we were less than we could be - less because Father had been remiss or sneaky in not revealing the whole truth and ourselves being less because we were not Gods. But in actual fact we were God’s Sons.
The primal transgression was to distrust God and be seduced into trusting ourselves. This resulted in taking things into our hands. But the result was separation from God – not spatially but in spirit and life.
SPIRIT AND LIFE
Jesus ministered spirit and life because He was spirit and life, as a result of the fact that He and Father are one. In Jesus our primal sin is undone and we enter the oneness with God that Jesus enjoys with Father. This is ultimate grace.
Athanasius writes, “He might offer the sacrifice on behalf of all, surrendering His own temple to death in place of all, to settle man's account with death and free him from the primal transgression.” (1)
CHOOSE LIFE
The new covenant is your freedom from the primal transgression. Continuing in old covenant mode is perpetuating it.
You are freed from the primal transgression if you believe you are. You are freed if you don’t believe it but not in your mind. Take up the mind of Christ and live in your inheritance as Jesus urged. ‘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 born again and the day that you come alive in spirit and life.
(1) St. Athanasius. On the Incarnation - Enhanced Version (pp. 21-22). Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Kindle Edition.
