THE NO NONSENSE GOSPEL OF JESUS AND PAUL
17/12/24 13:22
The true Gospel is simpler and more accessible than many realise. Thus, Jesus urges all to live in the union with God He has won for us. Oneness with Christ is our starting place. Not something we are working towards or earning. ‘On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ John 14.20 NIV. This is not proof texting. It’s the tenor of John and Paul. It is the actual Gospel.
VISION AND PLAN
In Jesus Christ the vision of the triune God is realised – God’s vision to enjoy companionship with like-minded daughters and sons. In Jesus the trinity reaches out to enfold the human race in Christ and being enfolded in Christ we are drawn into the circle of Divine Love – the life hub of the universe. This is not love as an abstraction but love in the form of real persons who in their Communion are God.
Trinitarian understanding is the key to unwinding legalism and religiosity. In Jesus we are included in the Holy Family so that the fall is undone, separation is over and union with God starts off on a new level. Jesus as the Empowerer of law and religion may be a version of Christianity but it is never the Kingdom of God.
SEPARATION UNDONE
The separation that Adam began is finished, the relativisms, dichotomies and religiosities of the knowledge of good and evil have been cut short and belonging instead of entitlement, self-interest, division and separation have become the living way. The oneness that is God – three persons one God – has passed to the human race in Jesus Christ.
Karl Barth writes, “The appointment of Jesus to be the Christ takes place in the Spirit and must be apprehended in the Spirit. If is self-sufficient, unlimited, and in itself true. And moreover, it is what is altogether new, the decisive factor and turning-point in man's consideration of God. This what is what is communicated between Paul and his hearers.”
OPPOSITE TO THE LETTER THAT KILLS
Christ our life is life in the Spirit. It means life in the Spirit of Christ and implies oneness with God as daughters and sons in spirit and truth. Truth is Christ and agreement with Him about God and us is light and life.
Barth continues, “Just as genuine coins are open to suspicion so long as false coins are in circulation, so the perception which proceeds outwards from God cannot have free course until the arrogance of religion be done away. Now, it is the Gospel that opens up the possibility of this final perception, and, if this possibility is to be realized, all penultimate perceptions must be withdrawn from circulation.” (1) This is to say that we need to value the real Gospel and real Christ to see real life.
STUBBORN STAGNATION
To the ‘Arrogance of religion’, we may add stubbornness and the quiet bigotry that is our attachment to received formulations and distortions of the gospel made in the image of the original lie. ‘The perception that proceeds outward from God’ is the Christ Himself who is our light and our mind. Such minds cut through cunningly devised fables and veils of deception that pose as orthodox and respected beliefs when what they is are is seeds that grow into paddocks of tares.
(1) Page 37, Epistle to the Romans.