WHAT OUR LIFE IN CHRIST ACTUALLY IS
25/04/24 12:30
It’s easy to see the Bible as a compendium of morality. For many people that’s what Christianity is. If that’s all it is, then it’s unlikely that it is good news for many since we all have feet of clay. The good news however is that Christ is our life. One can read the Bible and be quite a scholar of it – and miss this point. The Kingdom Jesus began is not a Christian version of the knowledge of good and evil. It’s Jesus as us. How. By atonement and incarnation.
LIFE IS HIS MISSION
‘The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full’ John 10.10 NIV.
ARE YOU ALIVE IN YOUR SPIRIT?
It’s possible to spend one’s life as a missionary and still be a dead person walking. Why? Because one can live in a non-gospel or half gospel of attempting to earn our salvation. Real rest of the true sabbath kind is agreeing with Christ that He has drawn us into His life in His person and our allowing Jesus to express Himself as us by the Spirit.
CHRIST IS US
Jesus is the Living Way to a full life in which we become the fruit of His life in us. The life that is Jesus is unlimited. It’s not only about dealing with sin. It’s joining us to the life that is God. Life that is not an abstraction but the trinity ‘at home in us’.
But it’s not just a focus in sin. I know of no one who has not suffered pain in some way. Jesus participated in our life and our pain so that He is truly our Saviour.
WOVEN INTO US
Christ’s Teaching is that He is our life. ‘Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them” John 14.23 NIV.
YOUR TODAY LIFE
‘Christ our life’ is The Message of the post cross age while a gospel of morality and religion is not. Any gospel that is less than the fullness of Christ or a compilation of additions and accretions joins us to the culture of Adam and the life-robbery of the liar and the thief. Jesus is our forgiveness and His Person revealed in us when He comes in our flesh by the Spirit.
ALIVE IN THE SPIRIT AND FULL OF GRACE IN TH FLESH
‘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 life in the Spirit – the Christ life that produces real fruit and genuine transformation.
Eternal life is infinite life. We can participate in this life now by agreeing with Jesus that we are already placed into His Communion by His acts and His Person. Sure, we will die one day but we will also enter a new heavens and a new earth and we will live forever. But we can participate in this life everyday by living in incarnation reality.
TODAY
‘When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory’ Col 3.4 NIV. Christ by the Spirit appears in you when you agree with Him that He is your life.
Eternal life begins now. When we agree with Jesus and Paul that Christ is our life we enter the realm of spirit and life foretold by the burning bush and realised by the incarnation – by which we are woven into the trinity and the trinity is woven into us. Not only are we now the sons of God. We are the habitation of God. God is in you because Christ is in you.
WITNESS TO CHRIST
“The sixty-six books of the Bible are woven together by a single storyline. One of the best ways to look at the twenty-seven books of the New Testament may be to see them as a commentary on the Old Testament. The entire Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, are unified by a common narrative. And once our eyes are opened to see that narrative, everything in both Testaments gels into a coherent, understandable, and amazing story. And what is that story? Well, it’s not enough to call it “salvation history” as many people do. No. It’s the story of Jesus Christ.” (1)
THE MEANING IS ALIVE
The meaning of the Bible is that Christ is our life. The good news of the Bible is that we have been made one with God by Christ’s Person and life. The truth that the Bible asserts is that Jesus Himself is life.
ALREADY IN HIS LIFE
One need not be a theologian to access this life. Simply by believing that Christ is our life, we enter His life and begin to participate in the fellowship of the trinity. Yet right theology is a help. There is little life in Christianity as a religion and an extravagance of life in oneness with Jesus the Christ of God. The mystery of our life in God is more amazing and sure than many people think. It’s less about our receiving Christ and more about the fact that we have already been received into His life.
PERSONAL AND COMMUNAL
“The end product of biblical Christianity is a person—not a book, not a building, not a set of principles or a system of ethics—but one person in two natures (divine/human) with four ministries (prophet/priest/king/sage) and four biographies (the Gospels). But those four biographies don’t tell the whole story. Every bit of Scripture is part of the same great story of that one person and that one story’s plotline of creation, revelation, redemption, and consummation.” (2)
Unless our starting point is that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, we will never enter the Kingdom of God, live in the Spirit or be sons in spirit and in truth. Sure, we may enter eternal life, but in this life in the body our contribution will be droplets rather than rivers of living water.
(1) Sweet, Leonard. Jesus: A Theography . Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.
(2) Ibid.
