THE CHRIST WHO IS OUR LIFE

Happy Easter! The celebration of the death of our Adam and the rise of our Jesus in the Christ of God.
 
Some Christians live a weak and flaccid Christianity because a shallow involvement suits them. What they think they have, is an insurance policy but that’s all. They hardly have a life in God. Others have a meagre yet sincere life of churchianity and routine. This passes for Godliness even though it’s pretty much meal of condiments rather than the main course. Others live a life of legalism having been baptised into a gospel of law and earning Christ. Some of these are earning atonement as well as earning their own messiah who is themselves.
 
PEACE AND REST
 
When Jesus appeared to the Believers following His resurrection the first thing He said to them was ‘Peace I give you.’ Christ Himself is our Sabbath Rest. The real Sabbath is a person which means that we have the bonus of a Sabbath life. Sabbath-keeping does not guarantee this. Christ our Sabbath-life does.
 
The fact is, we can enter eternal life even if our gospel is mean and misguided because Christ is who He is and what He has accomplished even when our understanding is dim and our fellowship with Him problematic. Having said that, Jesus invites us to join the life He has made for us. He invites us to take His light burden and His easy yoke. It does take some effort in that we cannot live in nihilism and separation from Him and expect a fulsome life. Christ our life brings spirit and life to us in this life and is concluded in the next. There is no good reason to travel in the goods van when you have a first class set seat with Christ in the journey of your life.
 
YOU WILL LIVE IT WITH CHRIST
 
This does not mean that your life will be easy. It does mean that Christ has participated with us in pain and sorrow. We do have eternal life in Christ and it is real.
 
“T.F. describes humanity’s reception of salvation in terms of a ‘realisation’ that it has already been accomplished for us in Christ:
 
Our adoption, sanctification and regeneration have already taken place in Christ, and are fully enclosed in his birth, holy life, death and resurrection undertaken for our sakes, and proceed from them more by way of realisation or actualisation in us of what has already happened to us in him than as new effect resulting from them.
 
“Knowledge of God certainly holds an essential place in the Biblical witness. Paul often prays that the early Christians would come to a deeper knowledge of God’s truth (Eph. 1:18-20; 3:14-19; Phil. 1:9-10; Col. 1:9-10). Paul urges the Romans to ‘be transformed by the renewing of your mind’ (Rom. 12:2). The Greek word for ‘repentance’, metanoia, which has come to be understood in terms of acts of confession and penance, is better translated as ‘a change of mind’. This indicates the significance of what we believe for the actualisation of salvation in us.” (1) Why drink from a glass half empty when Christ has given you an overflowing glass.
 
(1)    Alexandra Radcliff, The Claim of Humanity in Christ: Salvation and Sanctification in the Theology of T. F. and J. B. Torrance (Princeton Theological Monograph Series Book 222)P 108.