WITH JESUS AND AND PAUL OR SOME OTHER GOSPEL
03/03/24 14:38
‘I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.’ Here is Paul’s summary of our life in Christ. This can be read two ways. In the mindset of the apostles and Church Fathers, this scripture would mean Christ becomes you so that you as a son/daughter are an express of Him. Read through the lens of the law it would mean I live the law and the Christian life through Christ who is in me.’ The first is classical Christianity. The second is an upside down gospel and a subverted christianity.
NO DUALISM IN CHRIST JESUS
By the Spirit Christ’s life in you is direct He is His own mediator. Jesus is life and righteousness. His life in you becomes His life as you. Christ mediates Himself – never ‘the letter that kills’.
If we have been saturated in an abysmal law culture, we may read Galatians 2.20 as all about our self-effort to be in Christ. If we have absorbed separationism we will see a similar thing. Our oneness with God will have been obscured and we will spend much effort obtaining the union with God that we already possess. Or worse. Attempting to gain Christ by working up worthiness of Christ.
But this is not what this scripture is about.
OUR BEING IS IN GOD
This scripture is what it is, a reiteration of the truth of our post cross life - that Jesus announced in John 17.20, 22 ‘I have given them the glory You gave Me, so that they may be one as We are one— I in them and You in Me.’ This is about Christ as us and for us. Our glory is to function as who we are as sons/daughters of God. Never to be a religious abstraction and never to be a clone of anybody else – not even of Jesus Christ. We are one with Him but we are not a clone of the man Jesus of Nazareth. We are totally ourselves when Christ is our life. This is the Living Way of being the you that is an agent of Christ’s life to yourself and an aching world.
THE CORE
Here is the Grand Truth of the post cross age. Christ’s oneness with Father is our oneness. This oneness is a oneness of interwoveness of being. We are woven into the trinity in the spirit of sonship in the Son of Man/Son of God.
Galatians 2.20 is about Christ our life. It has to be, to align with Paul’s gospel and Christ’s declaration that He is the way, the truth and the life of ourselves in God.
“When we consider this verse together with the whole context of Paul’s letter, it should not be read as if our faith in Christ is essential, but that the faithfulness of the Son of God on our behalf is what matters most (see further Paul in Eph. 4:11-13).
This is the vicarious humanity of Jesus – the surety of our belonging and the reality of oneness with God. The new covenant is Jesus is our life.
(1) Morrison, Stephen D.. T. F. Torrance in Plain English (Plain English Series Book 2) (p. 148). Beloved Publishing, LLC. Kindle Edition.
