WEAR THE INNER CLOTHES OF CHRIST YOUR LIFE
21/12/24 07:49
Legalism is a poor man’s gospel because it leaves us poor when we are actually spiritually rich in Christ. Glued to bits and pieces of morality, fragments of law or church distinctives, we are wedded to self-made, false grace as well as a bitty-non holistic righteousness full of holes and tares of the kind that Jesus describes as putting new patches on an old garment.
POVERTY MENTALITY
Legalism just rips away and will not hold. In this mode of poor eyesight we cannot see the Kingdom of God because we are manacled to the kingdom of Adam. What you have in being born again is death to the adamic self and resurrection into Christ who is our life. As moral we may think ourselves to be in any amount of legalism – we have not been born again so that Kingdom Life remains non-sensical to us. We are not spiritual , not a self and not a whole person in any degree of legalistic Christianity.
Attempts to reform social ills by education and social manipulation fall short because the cure is a new heart at the hand of Christ, which is a new inner life.
A NEW YOU AND A NEW US
“Anything less than the death of the False Self is useless religion. The False Self must die for the True Self to live or, as Jesus himself puts it, “Unless I go, the Spirit cannot come” (John 16:7).
CONFRONTS US
“This is rather clear but also devastating news. Theologically speaking, let me put it this way: Jesus (a good person) still had to die for the Christ (the universal presence) to arise. It is the pattern of transformation, but the letting go of the original “good person” is always a huge leap of faith precisely because it is deemed to be so “good.” Biblically it is foreshadowed in the killing of the innocent Passover lamb, which had been taken into the home and likely already named by the children (Exodus 12:5–6).
NOT BAD – JUST NOT LIFE
“What has to die is not usually bad; in fact, it will often feel good and necessary. Your True Self is that part of you that is going to live forever and sees truthfully. It is divine breath passing through you. Your False Self is that part of you that is constantly changing and will eventually die anyway. It is in the world of passing forms and looks out with itself as the central reference point—which is never true.” (1)
SO REBORN!
Our topic here is the new birth in its real, rather than its religious sense. Being born gain is more than giving up drugs, sex and materialism as idols. It’s dying in Christ to the false you so that the real you can live and flourish as Christ comes in our flesh.
LIVE YOUR CHRIST LIFE
Leanne Payne aptly put it this way. “Until this redeemed self is acknowledged and accepted, we live out of the immature, unaffirmed self, and we cannot hear God aright. From that centre, we also “mishear” our fellows, and they become the target of the diseased “matter” that yet resides within our souls—that is, our fears of rejection, our bitterness, envy, anger, and sense of inferiority.” (2)
THERE’S A WAY OF LIKING YOURSELF
Not only can we not assume a fulsome righteousness in the old self mode. We cannot grow into gracious, whole and well-balanced persons with the ability to love ourselves and others. The harmonious development of the mental, physical and spiritual aspects of our person cannot happen in any form of law-based religion because such religion is innately fragmented. It tries to make a whole out of parts. The one Whole Person par excellence is Jesus Christ who is both one of us and God. So we are graced with His vicarious life in place of us as well as re-created in His image by His creative power.
‘When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory’ Col 3.4 NIV. Christ appears in you now and in fullness at the end of the age.
(1) Rohr, Richard. Immortal Diamond: The search for our true self (pp. 59-60). SPCK. Kindle Edition.
(2) Payne, Leanne. The Healing Presence: Curing the Soul through Union with Christ (p. 54). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.