ESTABLISHED IN GOD
31/08/23 13:33
Christ has rooted you in His Life. Baptism means that you have died in Christ to your life in religion to rise with Him into His life in the Spirit. It is the last day of winter in Melbourne. Reminds me of the winter that ends with the appearance of Father Christmas in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It’s interesting that C. S. Lewis used Father Christmas to signal the end of the non-life represented by ‘aways winter and never Christmas.’ Christmas is traditionally the celebration of the birth of Christ. It’s a time of gifts and joyful feasting. Christ’s gifts to us are all about our rising out of non-life into increasing life in Jesus. Christ is our life in everyway.
THE GIFTS
A lady friend of mine once asked if Jesus spoke in tongues. I opined then that I did not think He needed to. But then I did not know what I know now with certainty. Jesus was fully God and one with the Father. He did not need the gifts of the Spirit since as God He was one with Father and Holy Spirit. He was the Gift.
ANOINTING AND GIFTS NOT THE GOSPEL
We possess the gifts and the fruits as a result of Christ in us. The gifts themselves do not denote the new birth. Christians can operate somewhat in the gifts without being born again. They can move in some gifts of the Spirit without being in the Spirit. No Christian attached to the law is in the Spirit.*
NEW BIRTH OR NEW MORALS?
We are born again when Christ is our life, and we are not. Not when we have adopted a new moral stance for the sake of Jesus. In the Old Testament some could operate in miracles. But none of these greats were born again. Not born again because there had as yet been Messiah, no incarnation of Christ among people and no incarnation in the personal life of Believers. Not until Pentecost made real what Jesus’ cross had achieved did the trinity in us become the new and living way of Adam undone and Christ our life begun.
I AND THE FATHER ARE ONE
Jesus was not one with the Father by way of anointing or gifts. He was one by nature – because Jesus of Nazareth and the Father are one. He was Jesus of Nazareth and fully God as Hebrews affirms.
SUSTAINED ANOINTING
To operate fruitfully in the gifts we must be rooted in a finished reconciliation. The cross gifts us the atonement (at-one-ment) and the incarnation that is the result, gifts us oneness with God. The gifts flow from this union. They are never primary. They are subsidiary to the oneness with God that has been achieved for us in Jesus. In Jesus Christ the triune God has enfolded us in God. Since the cross Adamic separation is undone.
A LIVED ATONEMENT
We are included and belong. The sense that we belong – this knowing that we are included in God is the effect of Christ in us witnessing to the truth of our inheritance in Him. Christ has His belonging in the trinity. In Christ we share in His belonging in God as man and God. His ‘knowing’ becomes our ‘knowing.’
The atonement is primary. The at-one-ment wrought by God in Christ is the undoing of Adam and the ‘doing’ of the sons and daughters of God in their post cross communion with God. This is the foundation of our belonging in God. The realisation of the atonement is incarnation – the trinity in us.
ONENESS WITH GOD’S ONENESS
“The early Church said that Jesus is “of one Being with the Father.” That is, Jesus is “one” in “nature” with the Father. Said another way, Jesus is of the same “God stuff” as the Father. Jesus is just as much God as is the Father; he is equal with the Father in every way.
At the same time, Jesus is not the Father and the Father is not the Son. While Jesus and the Father are “one” in “being” or “nature,” they are “distinct” in personhood.
To say that Jesus is “of one Being with the Father” is to say that the words and acts of Jesus are the words and acts of God! In more precise terms, Jesus and the Father are “one” in both being and agency. Thus, the Father and the Son always act with harmony of intent, purpose and will. We should not be surprised to learn that there is complete harmony between the acts of Jesus and the will of the Father.”
BETTER AND BETTER
But this is not all. James Torrance writes, “Worship is the gift of participating through the Spirit in the incarnate Son’s communion with the Father.” Jesus proclaimed this kind of oneness in His intercessory prayer.
ONE AS WE ARE ONE
Since the cross, we participate in His union with God because Christ is our life. ‘I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity’ John 17.22-23 NIV. This is to say that Christ has graced us with the oneness with Father that is His oneness with Father. Oneness is ours in Christ – not the result of any degree of repentance, not a reward for victory over sin or missionary exploits. This oneness is the gift of God in Jesus Christ. We are not Gods. But we are one with God because we are daughters/sons of God.
Union with God is yours because Christ is your life and His life is part of the triune God. Torrance depicts the extravagant blessing with which we are graced in Christ. “He lifts us up out of ourselves to participate in the very life and communion of the Godhead, that life of communion for which we were created.”
*Letter is death and spirit is life.
(1) Davis Ph.D., Rev. Martin M.. A Window into the Heart of God (p. 10). AsiAfrica Ministries, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
