THE PROMISE/THREAT OF UN-DILUTED LIFE

Un-diluted Truth and the Life that goes with it, is a threat to those who have found a degree of prestige in degrees of error. They oppose it because it annuls the pseudo life they would want people to find in them.
Paul’s letter to the Colossians is a profound work in that it is an expansion on the idea that reality is Christ and an elaboration on Jesus’ proclamation that He is THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE. Chuck Swindoll observes that “The apostle Paul described Jesus with some of the loftiest language in all the New Testament, focusing on Christ’s pre-eminence and sufficiency in all things. Paul presented Christ as the center of the universe, not only as the active Creator but also as the recipient of creation—in His taking on of human flesh. Christ was and is the visible image of the invisible God, containing within Himself the fullness of Deity (Colossians 2:9). [Christ is also who you are].
LIFE HIMSELF
It’s disturbing when human life is afflicted with the present chaos that the Living Means to a healed and wonderful live is overlooked in favour of all kinds of externalities.
“Because of His divine nature, Jesus is sovereign, above all things with an authority given Him by the Father. As such, Jesus is also Head over the church. He has reconciled all things to Himself through His death on the cross, making believers alive to God and setting them on the path to right living. This proper view of Christ served as the antidote for the Colossian heresy as well as a building block for Christian life and doctrine both then and now.”
Jesus Christ is not subservient to the law. He is life itself. He does not administer the law. He imparts Himself to us and the Church.
CHRIST IS ALL AND IN ALL
Paul’s letter is more than the answer to New Age mysticism. It declares Jesus Christ as the answer to legalism and any version of Christianity that is a modified version of the knowledge of good and evil. Paul declares in Col. 3.4 the core of Christian mysticism – the incarnation – which is life in the spirit. The spirit of Christ comes in our flesh so that we are an expression of Jesus where we are.
Male violence towards women is an evil in Australia today. Sadly at least some of these offenders are fundamentalists – an attitude that produces a rigidity of mind that needs to be replaced by Christ our life.
You might miss this if you have been raised in the frame of the law and expect glory to be yours at the end of a journey of law-keeping. The scripture does refer to the end of the age, but it is also about the now of our life in Christ. This is our life in oneness with God in Christ who by His Spirit lives in us to become us as Jill and George, so that we are ourselves in the glory of His incarnated life.
‘When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory’ Col 3.4 NIV. This is to say that you will grow into the glory of your true identity and mission everyday as you agree with Christ that He is your life.
 
EUCHARIST LIVED
 
Paul had a grip on the reality of ‘Christ as you’, Christ as the church and Christ as the new creation that we would do well to live from. He wrote, ‘Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all’ Col 3.11 NIV.
 
ALL MEANS ALL
 
Christ as ‘All in all’ means there is nothing we can add to Christ that increases Godliness and fruitfulness. There is no link we must forge ourselves to gain oneness with Christ and His Fellowship with the trinity. We are already one. We all are. Being in this oneness is as simple as agreeing with Christ that you do. This and not law-mongering is obedience. As such we become the expression of Christ.
 
DILUTED COUNTERFEIT
 
Christianity formed as a version of the knowledge of good and evil is a subtle counterfeit of the truth of Christ our life. There is no more a whole person approach by way of the law than you can carry water in a string bag.
 
Paul’s letter to the Colossians contains a concentrated revelation of life in the Spirit of Sonship. This statement is more than a description of inclusion in Christ. It is declaring our oneness with God in Christ while assuming that Christ incarnated is in ourselves, and the church as the Kingdom Jesus began.
 
DIRECT IMPARTATION
 
You will do better in Godliness and the realisation of your true self in holiness and grace when Christ is your pastor rather than any human being. In Christ our relation to the Shepherd of our souls is direct and undiluted. Don’t mistake a relationship with church for a relationship with Christ. You may relate to Him personally.
 
CHRIST AS YOU
 
In the New Testament, life, love and righteousness is not mediated to us by religion. It is mediated directly to us by Christ who is woven into our being. This is Christ come in the flesh in spirit and in truth. As an expression of Christ we do not bully or wound our wives and girlfriends.
 
To believe that Sonship is mediated to us by the law, religion, rites or moralism is to substantially insulate ourselves from oneness with Christ. It may be seen that religion can become a substitute for life, genuine holiness and God. God simply is. You simply are in Him. Are what? A son/daughter.
 
PERSONALISED IN US IN JESUS
“It is of course in and through Jesus Christ in particular that God’s interrelations with us and our interrelations with God are acutely personalised, for Jesus is the personalising activity of God incarnated in the midst of our human existence and our subject-subject relations. He, the incarnate ‘I am’ of God is the personalising Person in relation to whom in the Spirit we are personalised through the reconciling and re-creating activity of the Holy Trinity.” (1) We become real people incarnated with Christ.
CHRIST WOVEN INTO OUR BEING
There is nothing impersonal about Christ our life. Much that is impersonal about Christianity as a life in God is the effect of legalism and religiosity. In Christ we are in no need of the clothes of this religiosity and form. We may live naked to God as we were before the fall because Christ is our clothing and the glory of our being. There is no insulation between you and Christ Jesus. When we live in oneness we have Him as our life. One with Him we are one with God, yet fully ourselves as the sons and daughters of God. We are the church Jesus builds without human hands. You are the person Jesus builds out of Himself.
 
(1) Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (p. 160). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.