We can, if our house is founded on sand, reject sound doctrine as if it is a virus – so afraid are we of the truth that we are conditioned and impelled to define truth as error and relax into its torpor as if it isn’t the poison that it is.
THE OFF-SHOOT REFRAIN In the Last Battle, the dwarves in their miserable shed refused the food in the bucket because they thought it was slops. But the truth was it was a feast provided by Aslan. In some community’s glimpses of light and expositions of authentic Christian doctrine are habitually labelled ‘off-shoots.’ The irony is that these communities are offshoots of the most spirit-dulling kind. Their version of sub-Christianity is itself an off-shoot based not on scripture but a distortion of the Gospel. The result is so that their frame used to interpret the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus is skewed into the opposite of what was accomplished by Christ. We are talking of a weak gospel of real slops. A perversion in which the law leads to a false christ who upholds the law. In this foetid gospel we have an upside down cross and a false christ. The effect of this is to make Pinocchio’s out of those who could have been sons/daughters of God.
DISTRACTED SHEEP GO ASTRAY There are people who leave mainstream Christianity to join such sects. It seems that they do this on the basis that legalised Christianity with its contractual formulae of do’s and don’ts has an appeal. The illusion coalesces with the un-informed natural man’s adamic, impression of what Christianity is: A belief system that is mainly about moralism. This is what Nicodemus thought it was and also why Jesus informed Him that unless he was born out of this religion into oneness with Him, he would not discern the Kingdom of God.
BLINDNESS BEFITS THEM Some people never do. Some pastors spend their entire career attempting to put a decent face on a legalised gospel that is ‘no gospel at all’. Barth observed that religion does not save us. Jesus does. “Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is himself the way.” We affirm in these posts that Jesus is the way and the life. HIS EYES, HIS SIGHT, HIS LIGHT Baxter Kruger is correct to insist that life-giving spirituality is found in our coming into alignment with how Jesus see’s His Gospel. Not trying to bend the Gospel of Jesus and the apostles to some version of our own making. “Every single human being exists in the human being of Jesus Christ, eternal Son of God. In terms of Barth’s beloved Colossians, we could describe the simul iustus et peccator as the simultaneous, twofold, “Christ is your life” (see 3:4) and “Christ is your death” (see 3:3). In Barth’s view, then, righteousness is not primarily a forensic term to be fitted into a legal scheme of atonement but signifies true life from above, life derived solely from the life of God. Righteousness and life cannot be separated in Barth’s view any more than sin and death.” (1) This is why Christ is your life and you are not. (1)McSwain, Jeff. Simul Sanctification: Barth’s Hidden Vision for Human Transformation (Princeton Theological Monograph Series Book 232) (p. 4). Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.