THE GOSPEL WE TEACH
19/05/24 09:08
When the Gospel we teach is not the Gospel of Jesus, Paul and John but some derivation or dilution, we deny people Christ’s gift of life without limit and ladle out non-life-giving, stews well labelled as ‘death in the pot.’
James Torrance observes that, “Where religious life is our attempt to follow the example of Jesus, living by the golden rule .. this moralistic, understanding of God as the Christian life, [based on self-effort means] the doctrine of the Trinity loses its meaning, in in fact disappears - disappears—and with it all doctrines of atonement and unconditional free grace, held out to us in Christ.” (1) Holiness does not come from the subtle legalism of our ‘copying Christ’ {who can}, but it does come from Christ imbued by the Spirit in us and expressed as us. This is us being remade in the image of Christ from within. – theosis.
UNMOVED – MOVER god
Ant-trinitarianism is associated with legalism and its abstract god, since the knowledge of good and evil severs us from ourselves and a personal relationship with God that is the essence of the trinitarian relationship with itself.
TRINITY BASIC
The oneness relationship of the trinitarian persons with each other yet in distinct individuality is ours in Christ. This is to say that we are included in God in Christ in the kind of relationship that the trinity have with each other. Here holiness is to be a self who is a son/daughter of God. Christ. Joins us to God in the kind of relationship that God has in the trinity.
ONENESS IS REAL
In Christ we participate in God and God weaves Himself into us thanks to a finished atonement and a present incarnation of the trinity in our being. This prize is our experience of sons of God in fullness rather than in fragments and droplets of any crumbs of life that may come to us through a mistaken mode of living legalism as the bent gospel that it is. Our union with God derives from the same kind of relationship that is the Triune God.
None are compelled to be dead folks talking or working. Be a missionary, engage in charity work and preach the Gospel as you should and in doing it in the Living Way outlined above you will be alive with Spirit and Life and multiply this spirited life where you are.
(1) James B Torrance. Worship, Community and the Triune God of Grace. P 26.
