THE NEW CHRIST SELF AS YOU
09/05/24 10:43
Get your foundation right. Live Christianity and not some Derivation. The issue of salvation and Kingdom is not the law. The issue is your inclusion in God. Or not. The question for all Believers is, ‘ Are we living in the union with God that Jesus has won for us – or are we affixed in a molasses swamp of the law/knowledge of good and evil? THE FOUNDATION The foundation of all life is the Trinity and the basic fact of life is that we are included in this Fellowship in Jesus Christ. ONENESS WITH GOD IS JESUS In Christ you belong because He has embraced you and drawn you into Himself in His Person. The issue is that in Christ you are included in God. In yourself aka the knowledge of good and evil, aka the law - you are not. The issue for you is that you either live in separated Adam and Moses or in the oneness that is yours in Christ. The eucharist means you one with God in Christ. Obedience and life is living this. ONE SUBSTANCE WITH JESUS The Lord’s Table is not just a pretty rite or some ceremony to get you to try harder. In Jesus you are placed in the fellowship of God and God as trinity comes to live in you. This is the issue of salvation and the issue of your life in that you must choose whether to live in the Gift you have been given or continue in a version of the knowledge of good and evil. Incarnation is the Kingdom of God realised in you and your church. Life in the Spirit is never the gifts bolted onto the law. Life in the Spirit is Christ our life expressed as us.
Kingdom Agency is lived by those who know themselves as a manifestation of Christ. These are the sons/daughters of God, with authority. CHOOSE YOUR LIFE – DORMANT OR ALIVE? We can live a life of oneness with God if we choose. First, we must want to so live this way. Since the cross God is not somewhere else, never restricted to holy days or holy places. Christ is in you. Believing Jesus means that the Holy Family make their home in you, with the effect that you are the expression of God’s nature as yourself. To be this kind of ‘self’ is to be a Kingdom Multiplier. RAGGED SELF The self in the law is burdensome for you and grating on others. If you have been raised in a wooden, legalistic religious culture in which your life in God was defined as narrowly as words and beliefs, you may find simple oneness with God in Christ threatening. It does away with all entitlement because it is all grace.
MORE THAN THE GIFTS Or you will find the living way, a delight to ‘come into the Spirit’ as it is called. This is the Christ our life that Paul speaks of and which Christ has come in our flesh. This is entirely different to the law/religion come in our flesh. It’s the burning bush as you. THE GIFTS ARE NOT LIFE IN THE SPIRIT With the gifts of the spirit, which we must distinguish from life in the Spirit we may experience the gifts and the signs that were normal in the days of Jesus and the apostles. I have participated in this kind of life. I know that these things are real and that cessationism as a mindset is a delusion. SATISFIED DECEPTION Having said this, there are those who operate in some of the gifts who are not in the Spirit. Not in the Spirit because they remain in the law and are not in the New Covenant. They are not in their oneness with Christ having a different and misguided mind of separation. They live in a mindset of separation because they are the people of the law. We can stifle our personhood as a legalist or suffocate our being in religion. But in oneness with Christ we participate in His Resurrection as a way of life because He has places us in Himself to manifest as us. SEED AND SOIL Yet as wonderful as the manifest presence is, it is the constant indwelling presence that is the foundation of our life. Holy Spirit and the gifts are not the basis of the kingdom of God. Christ in you is the foundation of the Kingdom, specifically the incarnation of the trinity in you and in those who believe. The essence of Kingdom life is our already achieved union with Christ. NOT THE GOSPEL A gospel of the gifts, of healing on its own is not the Gospel of the Kingdom. Christ come in you and in the church is the Kingdom of God and the engine of the new creation. There would be no incarnation without the atonement of the cross and there is no Kingdom of God among us without the incarnation. Without our living in the incarnation and the reality of our one substance with God as sons – the social scientific re-invention of the church will be a dead tree and the gifts will have no root. THE SOWER The seed is Christ our life and the field is the triune God into which we are sown. THE TREASURE The treasure in the field is not Holy Spirit and the gifts. This treasure is the Gift of Union with God that is yours as a result of the enterprise of the trinity. The gifts without the new covenant are a vapour and cannot be sustained. WANT A BETTER MARRIAGE? A feature of the trinity is three persons, one God. It is this oneness in togetherness that is at the heart of all life, of salvation and social life. It’s the stuff of spirituality and the substance of Godliness. The water of life is Christ and the quenching of our thirst for union with God is ours in Him. Jesus not only forgives sin but takes us back to the Source of our being – the trinity. Union with God is our alpha. It’s also our omega. WORSHIP IS A LIFE Thomas Merton observes that, “The specific value that draws a Christian into the "desert" and "solitude" (whether or not he remains physically "in the world" ) is a deep sense that God alone suffices. The need to win the approval of society, to find a recognized place in the world, to achieve a temporal ambition, to "be somebody" even in the Church seems to them irrelevant. They realize themselves to be called to a totally different mode of existence, outside of secular categories and outside of the religious establishment.” It is not wrong to make a name for ourselves in the world of activity. It’s just that it is not life and certainly not life to the full. You can become a self in the world of externalities but never your real self until Christ is your life. Then the ordinary is incarnated with God’s life. This is the true life in the Spirit. THOSE WHO EAT JESUS ARE ALIVE Worship is a life. Not something one does in a praise and worship service. You need not live in a monastery when you can live an incarnated life. Now the Christ come in your flesh can counteract all works of the flesh and touch all you touch with spirit and life. Jesus is life Himself. He makes us alive in our spirit and lights our being with spirit and life. Unless we know this and are living in it, our deportment is marked by a certain dullness, and and spiritual insensitivity. Our lack of spiritual discernment will be pronounced and we will be a frustration to those for whom Christ is life and a drag on the advance of the genuine Kingdom of God. If you have ever wondered why Holy Spirit and the gifts bolted on to the law and old covenant, just fade away, this is why. Life in the Spirit and a sustained anointing is the result of union with God. Law places us in the lie of a separated mindset. PROPHETIC DAVID David lived before the incarnation, yet he enjoyed an amazing intimacy with God because he hungered for God and knew that communion with Him was the source of spirit and life. Yet any this side of the cross can have a deeper communion with God than did David. One does not need to join a monastery to do this. We can just agree with Jesus that He has drawn us into His life and communion with God in fullness; into the fellowship that is His fellowship with Holy Spirit and Father. Dualism is not for Kingdom People. ‘We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful the unholy and irreligious..’1 Tim 1.9 NIV. CAN YOU LEARN? You are not compelled to live in a bubble of handed-down suppositions. You don’t have to live a life of religious primitivism. You have not been handed an inheritance in sin management. There’s no contract in which you do this so that God will do that. Your church distinctive is neither your grace or your sanctification. Your inheritance is Christ’s life as yours. Adam’s separation has been undone. Moses’ laws have served their purpose and are redundant. God’s life has become our life. This is life in the Spirit and our oneness with Christ igniting the world.
