The essence of rebellion is distrust in God. The result of such vanity makes for the work of constructing our own Godliness. This debilitating folly was the effect of belief in Satan’s lie - the lie that Father was cheating on us. Jesus Christ undid this lie in His own person when He demonstrated the real nature of God and what it means to love us and be human.
LEGALISM IS THE LIE RATIONALISED But we continue in the lie when we warp our salvation into legalism and embark on the tedium and un-rest of ignoring life in the Spirit to live our lives in the flesh/law.
JESUS – LIFE-GIVER AND LIFE RESTORER “All things “without exception,” .. whether visible or invisible, in the heavens and on earth, came into being and continue to exist—to be held together, sustained, given life, preserved—in Jesus Christ, the Father’s eternal Son and Anointed One.” (1)
CHRIST IN YOU AND WITH YOU Jesus mediates Himself directly to you by the Spirit. This is Kingdom Life. Any Christianity that involves earning Christ, is a lie and a continuation of the premise of the fall. The idea that what God has done for our salvation is not enough, with the result that one must add to it by striving to make oneself worthy of Christ. This can be seen in sayings like ‘keeping close to Jesus’ along with the embeddedness of Arminianism in Christian culture, the notion of earning Jesus before one can be saved by Him. The idea that one must take ‘steps to Christ’ in order to belong to Christ contradicts the truth of the Gospel in which Jesus as son of God took steps to us to include us in all of His life. John emphasises that real Kingdom life as distinct from antichrist inspired substitutes is ‘Christ come in our flesh’. John’s words apply to the completed atonement and overall the incarnation of Christ in the Believer by the Holy Spirit. “The believer does not apply what Christ accomplished; the believer participates in what Christ has accomplished.” (2)
(1)Baxter Kruger. The Mediation of Christ.p4 (2)Radcliff, Alexandra S.. The Claim of Humanity in Christ: Salvation and Sanctification in the Theology of T. F. and J. B. Torrance (Princeton Theological Monograph Series Book 222) . Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.