LIVE FROM YOUR RECONCILIATION WITH GOD
22/08/24 07:15
There are good reasons why anointings, manifestations, miracles and the manifest presence are not the basis of our life in God. Just as the law, morality and legalism is not what Jesus gave us as His Kingdom Life. Union with God in Jesus is the treasure in the field and the pearl of great price. Don’t be distracted by an ‘almost gospel’. Live from the reality that in Christ you are reconciled to God.
GIFT OF UNION
What did Jesus earn for us? His gift to us is union with God. Just as separation from God produces a perverse humanity so union with God makes us the sons/daughters of God that we are. But this is a state of being – not a description of some aspect of the knowledge of good and evil and the One Way of being graced and transformed. Richard Rohr writes, “Unless you experience the Spirit, which Jesus says is “the water that I will give which will turn into a spring within you, welling up unto eternal life” (4:14), the whole thing falls apart. If one has not made contact with the Spirit Spring of Water, we will always define ourselves by nonessentials and cultural accidents and external forms and formulas.”
DIRECT UNION WITH GOD IN CHRIST BY THE SPIRIT
By the Spirit Christ weaves us into God and God into us. By the Spirit Jesus graces us with His life and expresses Himself in our persons. This is the incarnated life.
Thomas Torrance writes, “It is precisely as the incarnate Son shares with the Father his eternal being and nature, that he also shares with us our contingent and mortal being and nature. The utterly astonishing thing proclaimed in the Gospel is that God himself came among us precisely as man. It is as such that God meets us, reveals himself to us, and acts on our behalf, as he who fully shares with us in the wholeness of our human being, nature, and condition, in body, mind, and soul.” (1) We are joined to God in the person of Jesus Christ who is God and is one of us. This is why Christ is our life and we in our machinations and ‘other gospels’ are not.
MADE ONE WITH GOD - RECONCILED
“In the person that we call Jesus Christ, God and humanity are reconciled. This point is important! “Reconcile” means to “restore” or “heal” the relationship between God and humanity that was broken by sin. In the person we call Jesus Christ, God and humanity are brought together in love, peace and harmony. Therefore, Jesus is the reconciliation of God and humanity.” (2)
Good works, the gifts and manifestations do not reconcile us to God. I have seen people who operate in the gifts living miserable lives. Why? The anointing and the gifts are the result of our reconciliation with God. Not the cause of it. Our peace, joy and inner healing are found in enjoying the oneness with Father, Son and Holy Spirit that is ours in Jesus Christ. This is our everyday eucharistic life in which our normal is enfolded in God.
(1) Torrance, Thomas F.. The Trinitarian Faith (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (p. 136). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
(2) Davis Ph.D., Martin M.. The Christian Doctrine of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit (p. 20). AsiAfrica Ministries, Inc.. Kindle Edition
