LIGHT/LIFE IS JESUS
03/10/24 12:34
The primary revelation and exposition of truth – the truth about God, salvation and ourselves is found in the person of Jesus Christ. Not in the Ten Commandments and not in what Jews knew as the law (torah). Light and life is not found in the law because it is at best only partial life. Full Life is mediated to us by Christ who is the Vine who joins us to the life of the trinity. We are whole and Holy people in Christ our life.
UNL-IFE OF ABSTRACTIONS
Unlife has its source in the knowledge of good and evil, aka the law. These prescriptions belong to the era of separation from God. In this age we are joined to God by God in the person of Jesus Christ.
SURPASSING GLORY/UNLIMITED LIFE
Thus, Paul writes, ‘If the ministry that brought condemnation was glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness! For what was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory. And if what was transitory came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts!’ 2 Cor 3.9-11 NIV. We will not advance from glory to glory in the law. But we will deplete in stagnation to stagnation.
INFINITE
Any ministry from the law is dull compared to Christ our life and that any life that comes from the law, droplets though they are, is fleeting and cannot be compared to the infinite rivers of life that flow from Christ our life.
A fulsome knowledge of God is not found in the words on stone delivered to Moses on Sinai. The life of God is found in knowing God and in knowing Him in terms of Jesus Christ. It is in Jesus that we know God as God and ourselves as we are in God.
SONSHIP IS ENTIRELY PERSONAL
I spent many years in company with a person much older than I. He had rusted on views on many things. Over time it became clear to me that he had no understanding of himself. A life in externalities leaves the real us unknown and untouched.
Our life in God has nothing to do with the law (externalities). This life flows to us from the reality of the trinitarian God who enfolds us in Himself by making us one with God yet fully ourselves. The spirit of sonship never denudes you of you. It makes you who you are as your real self.
PERSONAL TRINITY/PERSONAL CHRIST
“In line with Karl Barth’s Christological epistemology, Thomas Torrance grounded the revealed knowledge of God in the personal ministry of Christ as the one who discloses to us the innermost being of God in the same act of reconciling estranged and sinful humanity to God. This is the inner logic at the heart of the atonement that binds humanity to God in a saving way and God to humanity in a knowing way.” (1)
CHRIST’S LIFE AND DEATH IS NOT POINTLESS
In the law we neither know God or know ourselves. Should we insist on retaining ourselves in the law we divorce ourselves from the atonement and continue in Adamic/Mosaic separation in our soul even though this separation has been annulled by the cross and the two have been made one in Jesus Christ. Don’t leave your treasure in the ground.
CHRIST’S RIGHTEOUSNESS IS OUR LIFE
The separation of Adam from God is the reason for the woodenness that afflicts the law-keeper and which leaves him in semi-blindness, living outside the spirited life that is his in Christ. It’s why Paul asserts, ‘If righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!’ Gal 2.21 NIV.
