THE ESSENCE OF LIFE
01/09/23 15:21
We may rise above a religious view of companionship with God when we concentrate on God as ‘being’ and ourselves as part of this being rather than living from an intellectualised christianity, a reliance on proof texts and the backpack of a Belief System. Our part of this Being is in Family. We are sons and daughters of God included in God’s divine Communion.
The essence of the Kingdom Jesus began is not a religion. It is an incarnation of God’s self into our being. Paul nailed it when He declared, ‘In Him we live and move and have our being.’ This is not just an interesting statement. It is the nature of the undoing of Adam and the re-doing of ourselves in God by the grace of Christ.
The core truth of the real gospel is that we are included in the Communion that is God.
WHY CHRIST IS OUR LIFE
Myk Habets observes that, “According to Torrance, incarnation and atonement are intrinsically ‘locked into one’: ‘It is surely in this way that we are to understand the teaching of the New Testament that the Lord Jesus Christ is himself our justification, redemption, mediation and propitiation; he is himself the resurrection and the life.” The Christ is not an amalgam of spiritual abstractions or an intellectual fabric. Jesus is these things here mentioned since He is our life.
A COMPLETE ONENESS
Habets continues, “We are united to Christ not only in his death but also in his perfect life of filial obedience and love to the Father. This is also what holds justification and sanctification together. This explains Torrance’s .. appeal to objective and subjective justification” in the person of Christ.
IN A PERSON
“Justification, sanctification, mediation, and propitiation took place principally in the person of the Mediator, not as a third party between God and humanity, for Christ was of one and the same being as God and of one and the same humanity as we are. ‘His mediation took place, therefore, both within his ontological relations with God and within his ontological relations with mankind.” Our life in God is a life in God via an intimate union with Jesus Christ. Jesus left you more than ‘a faith.’ He has given us all an intimate communion with God in the person of Himself.
START AT THE DOOR
The essence of the Kingdom is not the law or morality. The substance is an achieved union with God. It is this oneness of being that energises us with infinite life – life that drives out sin and degradation and joins us to the infinite life of God that is eternal. Here we are subject to the healing of wounds, of twisted view of God and the moulding of our persons in God’s presence into who we are as daughters and son of God.
