JUST SAY YES
08/12/24 14:23
We have a part to play in participating in the salvation that is already ours – which is not only forgiveness for sins but the undoing of the fall. Undoing in that the alienation of Adam and Eve has been replaced by the oneness of Jesus Christ with The Father as part of the trinity. When Jesus says, ‘Come to me all who are burdened and cast down and I will give you rest’ He is inviting us into a Sabbath Communion of oneness with God that is His to give. In Christ we have a sabbath life.
AGREE WITH CHRIST
As Baxter Kruger explains, our part is far less about receiving Christ and entirely about us agreeing that we have been received into His life of oneness with God. This is a contrast between the popular and misguided concept that our work is to receive Christ, earn intimacy with Him and ‘keep close to Jesus.’ There is no double jeopardy, as in earning our salvation and earning Christ. Christ has taken steps to you. God in Christ has drawn us into His fellowship and more. He has covered us in His Trinitarian Communion and honoured us as daughters and sons who are included in heaven’s Communion.
UNIVERSAL CHRIST – COMPREHENSIVE UNION
To be baptised into Christ is to be baptised into union with God. Our salvation and belonging is complete in Christ as a Thomas Torrance observes, “As the incarnate Son of the Father Jesus Christ had been sent to fulfil all righteousness both as priest and as victim, who through his one self-offering in atonement for sin has mediated a new covenant of universal range in which he presents us to his Father as those whom he has redeemed, sanctified and perfected for ever in himself. In other words, Jesus Christ constitutes in his own self-consecrated humanity the fulfilment of the vicarious way of human response to God promised under the old covenant, but now on the ground of his atoning self-sacrifice once for all offered this is a vicarious way of response which is available for all mankind.”
If there is a difference between the old and the new covenant it is this: The old was obey and live. The new is ‘I have made you alive in Myself so that you are one with God in My grace and empowered to obey.’ You are the fruit of this vine and the substance of this tree of life. No longer a wooden religious wood-heap you are the spirit and life of Christ as Ben and Julie.
