CHRIST OF TRUE GOD
12/09/23 13:57
‘In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it’ John 1.4,5 NIV. This hope for those who have been schooled in darkness as light.
Spiritual truth is the culture of Christ our life and the product of the kind of relationship with God that Jesus had with His Father and Father had with Jesus. This kind of relationship is accessible to all since Christ’s reward of the cross has been to share His relationship with Father to all who agree to believe in Him. It’s the basis of ‘knowing God and Jesus Christ whom God has sent.’ ‘In Christ, His relationship with Father becomes ours. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ John 14:20. Oneness with God is the result of the cross and the power of the new creation Kingdom of God.
VALUABLE IF..
We may be informed about what good scholars and teachers of the Gospel have said. This is of value if they are genuine channels of Christ’s Gospel and we are personally able to distinguish what Christ’s Gospel is. It’s not much help if the gospel we have absorbed is warped into - an almost correct - but bent enough to be a virus version of our legacy in Christ. Mutations cause cancer in the body and the Body of Christ.
NOT A COMPOSITE
We need to understand that Christ’s Gospel is the Gospel of Jesus and the apostles. Spiritual truth is not found in a compilation of current thinking from various sectors of the Body of Christ. The true Gospel is not human ideas about God. It’s God’s ideas about God mediated through Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit, the apostles, Church Fathers, Reformed theologians and genuinely apostolic teachers. Pluralism does not apply to the one Gospel of the Kingdom.
OFF TARGET MUMBLINGS
Bruce Ritchie observes that where there is “a culture .. that shies away from attempting to say what God is in himself, and prefer[s] to discuss human ideas about God, or to reflect on the human response to the God-concept…This surrenders what could be a true knowledge of God.” (1) The truth about God and this Gospel of the Kingdom is not found in theological relativism or any private interpretation. There is no ‘brand’ of the Gospel other than that of Jesus and the apostles.
GOD OF TRUE GOD
[Torrance] “insisted that theological work only has validity, whether in the church or in the academy, when God is allowed to be true to his nature as the living God, and when we listen to this living God as he discloses himself to us.” We would be correct in thinking that if a legalistic frame is cast over God and Christ is made a function of the law, that we have invalidated Christ’s Gospel and substituted a gospel of our own. (2) Such mutations debilitate the church and produce dead folks talking. It is possible to be of the Body of Christ as a tumour rather than a spirit filled organ of agency and life.
Paul used the words ‘Christ our life’ because He is - in every possible way.
(1) Ritchie, Bruce. T. F. Torrance in Recollection and Reappraisal (p. 53, ). Pickwick Publications. Kindle Edition.
(2) Ibid (p. 53).
