ALIVE IN THE REALITY THAT CHRIST CREATED FOR US
10/10/24 08:14
We know two things about God. God is Trinity and the expression of God to us is Jesus Christ. Another thing we know about God is that the trinitarian relations that pertain between Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the kind of relationship God has with us in Jesus. God is personal, trinity and not an abstraction. Not inert as in idols of wood and stone or the idols that can be worshiped as belief systems.
We participate in the divine nature in the person of Jesus. Not by the law or any form of self-ingratiation.
Thomas Torrance writes, “There is only one Mediator between God and man, who is himself both God and Man, and only one revelation of God in which he himself is its actual content.. All authentic knowledge of God is derived and understood in accordance with the incarnate reality of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ, and is formulated in doctrinal coherence with Christology. This is to say, doctrinal statements about God are possible and true only when Christologically grounded, for only in Jesus Christ do we really have to do with an objective personal self-revelation of God which bridges the distance between God and us and which is identical with the very Being of God.” (1)
This means that we will not know the Real God with a false christ or a distorted gospel. Any form of legalism posing as Christianity is a distorted gospel.
KINGS AND PRIESTS
All of us in some sense, are priests of Christ. We have the potential to be apostolic and we should be – this is not to say that we are apostles, but we have the privilege and adventure of being Life-Givers as representatives of Jesus. The truth is that we can be apostles of death or of life. Should we be at one with the Gospel of Jesus, Paul and John we will be multipliers of Christ’s life. But if we represent an abridged gospel or any gospel leached of grace, we present to a needy world a culture of depleted life and bondage masquerading as the Gospel Jesus began.
CAREFUL WHAT WE SOW
Take care what you sow because we reap what we sow. If we sow church, we will reap church. If we sow legalism we will reap paddocks of tares, stones, weeds and crows. If we are alive in our spirit because we live His gifted oneness, we will sow life because we are life. The Parable of The Sower – the one who produced a crop in huge abundance showed a profligate fruitage because he sowed in the deep-soil that is Christ our life. The withered field is the field of ‘doing what we have always done’ at the hand of those who will not see or hear – because they are comforted by the bubble that is their corporate opiate of religion. Life is a choice.
(1)Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (p. 17). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
We participate in the divine nature in the person of Jesus. Not by the law or any form of self-ingratiation.
Thomas Torrance writes, “There is only one Mediator between God and man, who is himself both God and Man, and only one revelation of God in which he himself is its actual content.. All authentic knowledge of God is derived and understood in accordance with the incarnate reality of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ, and is formulated in doctrinal coherence with Christology. This is to say, doctrinal statements about God are possible and true only when Christologically grounded, for only in Jesus Christ do we really have to do with an objective personal self-revelation of God which bridges the distance between God and us and which is identical with the very Being of God.” (1)
This means that we will not know the Real God with a false christ or a distorted gospel. Any form of legalism posing as Christianity is a distorted gospel.
KINGS AND PRIESTS
All of us in some sense, are priests of Christ. We have the potential to be apostolic and we should be – this is not to say that we are apostles, but we have the privilege and adventure of being Life-Givers as representatives of Jesus. The truth is that we can be apostles of death or of life. Should we be at one with the Gospel of Jesus, Paul and John we will be multipliers of Christ’s life. But if we represent an abridged gospel or any gospel leached of grace, we present to a needy world a culture of depleted life and bondage masquerading as the Gospel Jesus began.
CAREFUL WHAT WE SOW
Take care what you sow because we reap what we sow. If we sow church, we will reap church. If we sow legalism we will reap paddocks of tares, stones, weeds and crows. If we are alive in our spirit because we live His gifted oneness, we will sow life because we are life. The Parable of The Sower – the one who produced a crop in huge abundance showed a profligate fruitage because he sowed in the deep-soil that is Christ our life. The withered field is the field of ‘doing what we have always done’ at the hand of those who will not see or hear – because they are comforted by the bubble that is their corporate opiate of religion. Life is a choice.
(1)Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (p. 17). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
