NO CONTRACT JOY
11/01/25 11:43
There’s a better life for all rather than living from a religious contract in the hope that God will do something because ‘I did that’. The Old Covenant was ‘obey and live.’ How could it be anything but ‘contractual’ since it was a distorted and expensive way of thinking to be godly? I heard a person deny that the Living Way is ‘Christ our life’ on the grounds that it does not tell us specific things to do to be ‘saved.’ They had been raised in the law which accounted for their view of ‘buying a life in God.’
Attempts to earn acceptance with Christ are usually shambolic and pathetic because such acceptance cannot be earned. Our clutching at our ‘sacred’ behaviors and iconic distinctives, do not make us whole or holy. Only God in us makes us healed and holy which is why Christ is our life and we are not. We need to be clear. Grace is not an entity that helps us cope with or keep the law. Grace is the person of Christ who envelops us in God. More than ‘acceptance’ with God has been earned for us. Union with God has become ours in Christ.
Christ forms us into the likeness of Himself and our real self – not an agenda of ‘god things.’
For many years I thought that intimacy with God was earned by a sinless life or at least some measure of success in being an overcomer. A woman told me once that intimacy with Jesus was gained by ‘not sinning.’ This is similar to the notion that we have fellowship with Jesus by ‘keeping close to Jesus’ – a contradiction if ever there was one.
When Jesus declares Himself the way, the truth and the life He is saying what Paul is saying – that Christ is our life in every way. When Paul states in Romans that ‘Nothing can separate us from the love of God’ he is saying that nothing can separate us from who God is. God is love. Love is personal and a communion. It’s the Communion of the triune God. Because of Christ we are enfolded in this communion. Our part is to say ‘yes.’ We are not involved in a work of ‘receiving Christ. we are invited to agree with Christ that He has drawn us into His life.
James Torrance writes, “The Christ by whom all things were made is the same Christ who, for us and our salvation, assumed our humanity. In other words, the Son of God who created Adam for sonship and communion and immortality does not abandon His loving purposes for humanity, for every single human person. But in order to redeem humanity and to bring to fulfilment His purpose for humanity, for everyone, He Himself becomes a man that He might fulfil in us His own person God’s purpose of love and obedience and worship.” Christ is not only in you. He is shaping you into the likeness of Himself. (1)
(1) J.B. Torrance, Worship Community and the Triune God of Grace, P. 52.