A GOSPEL THAT IS CHRIST'S AND YOURS
24/06/22 07:34
There is a notion that there is some other reality lurking behind the Christ of God, something to which Christ is subordinate like the law as some suppose, a structure that has in some cases a Masonic tinge and a foundationalist taint. This is the assumption that there is a law higher than the Christ of God that defines the nature of Christ and the nature of us. We should be clear that this comes under the heading of what Paul calls ‘another gospel.’
ILLEGITIMATE FOUNDATION
This hidden foundation is the frame of the knowledge of good and evil and its separation of Christ from the I AM of Himself and the separation of the sons of God from their sonship. This presumption denudes humanity of their true selves and makes them slaves of abstractions rather than beings who have come forth from God to live as daughters and sons in God’s image of agency, freedom and righteousness.
SON EXEGETES THE FATHER
Thomas Torrance writes, “Of all the books of the New Testament none more than the fourth Gospel presents Christ as the servant-Son obedient in everything to the Father, doing only those things that please him, and from beginning to end fulfilling his will. It is thus that he the Son declares, ‘exegetes’ the Father, and reveals him to and within human life on earth and in history.” (1)
COMMUNION OF PERSONS
Thus, Paul writes, ‘Reality is Christ’ and ‘in Him we live, move and have our being.’ In John 17 Jesus indicates that our inheritance is our inclusion in the fellowship of the trinitarian God and that life in wholeness and holiness is ours when we realise and live ‘That I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ John n14.20.
DISTORTED FRAME
The frame of salvation history is not the law. The law is not the hub of life and holiness. The trinity is our home, our belonging and our life lived in the world on account of the mediation of Jesus Christ. The basis of all life is not laws and rules. It is Jesus Christ who Himself is the law of the Spirit of Life.
Jesus as the Logos is the personal frame of all that is. In Him our lives have meaning and purpose. Without Him, as our life, we can find ourselves looking to a Saviour in Christianity rather than the Christ of God.
PRETENTIOUS SYSTEMS
Douglas Campbell writes of “Magnificently pretentious truth systems designed to prove God’s existence collapse under closer scrutiny, releasing a culture of atheism. They also tend to obstruct us from ever reaching the truth that really matters, which is Jesus…
If we press on boldly with our foundationalist project, anxious that if our system collapses, then our faith does as well, we tend to end up—and arguably necessarily only ever end up—with “the god of the philosophers.” (2) As a result, there are sects in the Body of Christ who ignore the new covenant, the incarnation and life in the Spirit. They remain embedded in the binaries of the law because they know that if they made the new covenant their own their religion would collapse and their identity would dissolve. Put your identity in the wrong place and you end up trapped in something and nothing that has no foundation in Kingdom life whatsoever.
(1) Thomas Torrance. The Incarnation. P 68.
