LIFE IS NOT IN THE LETTER
31/08/23 13:35
If our faith is only a collection of propositions, we short-change ourselves and contain our living in a version of ‘the letter that kills’. Jesus’ Kingdom is more than a Belief System. It’s a state of being that is the effect of our inclusion in God at the Hand of Jesus Christ. This is why it’s possible to define ourselves as the Body of Christ – ( but live in a definition without substance) – a mode that has little content because we live from an incomplete gospel and a christ who is far less than the Christ of God. I speak of beliefs in which the atonement is not finished, grace is only partial and we must make our own steps to Christ. But the truth is that Christ has taken steps to us so that we belong with certainty in Him. In the New Covenant Christ is our belonging.
CREEDS DEVELOP
Thomas Torrance observes that, “The work of Irenaeus .. clearly reflects the general activity of the Church in the second and third centuries in its attempt to clarify the doctrinal substance of the faith in the light of its own objectively grounded order, in the course of which there emerged explicit formulations of belief which were eventually to take the form of the early creeds.
BY THE SPIRIT – CHRIST IN THEM
“From the way in which Irenaeus himself handled these .. credal formulae, it seems clear that they were not doctrinal propositions connected together through a logico-deductive system of thought. [THEY WERE] assertions of belief that are organised from beyond themselves by their common ground in the apostolic deposit of faith and ultimately by the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ, the one incarnate truth of God from which all evangelical truths flow.”
SMALL GOSPEL, WITHERED US
We can if we are not particular, accommodate ourselves to abridged gospels and lesser christs by habit and aberrant socialisation. This results in paddocks of tares and a cursed community that is wizened and debilitated by the non-life that comes from the perversion of the truth and the dullness of spiritual discernment that darkness claimed as light. When we accommodate ourselves to these illusion we may not be overtly wicked – but we do make ourselves vulnerable to evil that waits for its opportunity to multiply some form of death, like cancer cells in the body.
The Word was active in the development of the creeds. The Word is a Person and the Christ is the logos/power to separate truth from error and lead us into all light/life. This scripture is not restricted to the words of the Bible but is descriptive of Christ the Word in whom we interpret the Bible in terms of the Gospel of Jesus and the apostles rather in any amendment of our own. There is nurture in the apostle’s doctrine but loss in any other.
CREEDS DEVELOP
Thomas Torrance observes that, “The work of Irenaeus .. clearly reflects the general activity of the Church in the second and third centuries in its attempt to clarify the doctrinal substance of the faith in the light of its own objectively grounded order, in the course of which there emerged explicit formulations of belief which were eventually to take the form of the early creeds.
BY THE SPIRIT – CHRIST IN THEM
“From the way in which Irenaeus himself handled these .. credal formulae, it seems clear that they were not doctrinal propositions connected together through a logico-deductive system of thought. [THEY WERE] assertions of belief that are organised from beyond themselves by their common ground in the apostolic deposit of faith and ultimately by the self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ, the one incarnate truth of God from which all evangelical truths flow.”
SMALL GOSPEL, WITHERED US
We can if we are not particular, accommodate ourselves to abridged gospels and lesser christs by habit and aberrant socialisation. This results in paddocks of tares and a cursed community that is wizened and debilitated by the non-life that comes from the perversion of the truth and the dullness of spiritual discernment that darkness claimed as light. When we accommodate ourselves to these illusion we may not be overtly wicked – but we do make ourselves vulnerable to evil that waits for its opportunity to multiply some form of death, like cancer cells in the body.
The Word was active in the development of the creeds. The Word is a Person and the Christ is the logos/power to separate truth from error and lead us into all light/life. This scripture is not restricted to the words of the Bible but is descriptive of Christ the Word in whom we interpret the Bible in terms of the Gospel of Jesus and the apostles rather in any amendment of our own. There is nurture in the apostle’s doctrine but loss in any other.
