SONSHIP IS ONENESS WITH GOD
20/04/24 13:35
Knowing ‘God stuff’ is not knowing God. The words, ‘Now are we the sons of God’ may seem strange when we consider that we have always been sons. Jesus’ talk with the Woman at the Well indicates that through Himself, those who believe Jesus become worshipers in spirit and in truth because they become sons who are one with God and not alienated in the hearts from God by misunderstanding or legalism. By the One Spirit they have become sons/daughters in spirit and in truth.
We can be workers or sons. Workers are earning sonship and sons/daughters are living in it. Genuine sonship is not notional. It is the state of being in which the separation of the fall has been undone in Christ, we made one with God in Christ and are living in this oneness.
LIE/LIFE DICHOTOMY
We were created one with God and lived in that communion until our believing of the father of lies in place of the Father of Life led to our separation from God. Separation begins in the heart. This separation led to our living in the knowledge of good and evil instead of living in God. Truth in the context of the knowledge of good and evil is not life. Truth is truth when we agree with Christ that He has placed us in Himself – the way, the truth and the life. Truth, life and love are ours in oneness with God.
ENFOLDED IN GOD BY GOD
The love and grace revealed in the person of Jesus Christ means that we now possess the oneness with God that is similar to Christ’s oneness with God. Jesus was who He was, the Son of God and the son of man in this oneness with Father. This was His identity and the expression of His mission.
AUTHORITY OF THE SON/SONS
Jesus did works of power and accomplished all that Father planned that He should do, not because He had gifts of the Spirit as a discrete ministry of gifts. He had the Spirit without limit because He and Father were one. The gifts are always rooted in union with Father. It is well to remember, that in our case the gifts function properly when we live in new covenant union and do not bolt them onto the law and old covenant separationism.
FATHERHOOD AND SONSHIP
Thomas Torrance observes that “Fatherhood and Sonship belong inseparably together in the one eternal Being of God. It is as the Father of the Son that in his love God has freely condescended to be our Father, and to make us his sons and daughters by grace. It is this Son/Father, Father/Son relationship, that constitutes, along with the Holy Spirit, the inner ontological framework of the Gospel message, and it is by reference to it that all our knowledge of God the Father, undefined before, now becomes defined, so that all our prior conceptions of God and of his Fatherhood however reached are now critically sifted and replaced.” (1)
It is by living in the oneness with Father that is ours in Jesus that we grow in knowing Father as Father is. In union with Father, we grow into sons in spirit and truth. Lies that taint our joy that came from the father of lies fade away and we live as sons and daughters rather than as paddocks of tares.
(1) Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (p. 138). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
