NON-BISECTED LIVING
08/10/24 12:36
Years ago I read an excellent book entitled The Search For Meaning. One of the writers opined that spiritual truth was not usually found in ‘either or statements’ but ‘both and statements’. I did not realise it then, but she was talking about the need for non-dualism in human spirituality. Jesus’ kingdom is non-dualistic in that creation is healed in His Life. It’s dualistic statement is that life outside of Christ is some form of death.
YOUR NOW UNION WITH GOD
Think on the fact that Christ has joined us to God in Himself. In the mind of Christ know that in the person of Jesus we are joined to God closer than we were before the Fall. Christ is not separate from righteousness. Christ as God is life. He is righteousness and life to the full. In oneness with Him – incarnation – which is our inheritance, we are one with ourselves and one with life. The mystery of Godliness is that we are both one with Christ and truly ourselves. This is both wholeness and true holiness. True, we are a work in progress but fully graced in Christ’s Person.
GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM
Genuine, non-divergent Christianity is the living of our oneness with God in the Christ of God. Christian communities that make an obsession of the law and judgement vary from being misguided to a cult. Have nothing to do with them. Paul was right when he urged that legalism and a diluted christ is ‘dung’ – a religion of crap one might say. A law-based gospel is a cancerous mutation in the Body of Christ that does not belong this side of the cross.
Eternal life begins in being and not in doing. So is genuine Godliness. In oneness with Christ we become the expression of God – true daughters and sons in real life. An authentic Body of Christ is the manifestation of His Person in the world.
Being rooted/formed in Christ effects who we are and what we do. Which is why Jesus calls Himself the Vine and us the branches. Oneness with Christ makes us sons of God so that we do ‘son things’ and be son/daughter people. People in churches need to be alive in their spirit – not just members.
DUALISM AND FUNDAMENTALISM ARE BROTHERS
Fundamentalism, a version of legalism treats the words of God as if they are God. The words of scripture point beyond themselves to a greater reality than the letters on paper. Legalism cannot help making reality smaller than it is. Christ our life makes everything larger and more alive. Jesus as our Messiah spoke words of spirit and life because He was life. In Christ you will always be larger on the inside than the outside. As sons/daughters of God we are literally manifestation of our Father and His Son.
DUALISM AND THE LETTER THAT KILLS
Dualism can explain the nature of the physical world. It’s also the fabric of religion sown in the fall and the knowledge of good and evil. It’s innately disjunctive and compartmentalised. No wholeness here.
Dualism cannot explain the meaning of spirituality and if it presumes to, it’s certain that what is being spoken of as spiritual is not actually so. It is religious. Religion can be a corridor to life but religion is not actually alive. Anyone that is alive has a real link to the trinity and the spirit of life. This is the life-hub of the universe. It’s alive because it’s God and because it is Persons and we are joined to this spirituality in Christ.
ACCEPT THE INVITATION OR NOT
We can say ‘I will leave your gift of holiness/life in the ground because I’d sooner believe in myself than embrace your gift of your person as my life.’ But in doing so we have repeated the delusion of the fall. This delusion is that we can be Godly in and of ourselves. The commone version of this is that we can earn the acceptance of Christ – which is futile because we already have this. Don’t leave this treasure in the paddock.
Dualistic and non-dualistic thinking is relevant to a life in God. We either accept Christ’s invitation to participate in His life or we don’t. People can reject eternal life. But then again Believers condition themselves to degrees of un-life accepting as a gospel that which is ‘no gospel at all’. Thus they infect the world with mutant gospels and debilitate people with spiritual disease.
If we hunger for life and want more than pumping up our parents’ religion and routine Christianity, our life in God will be an adventure in which we increase in THE REVELATION of who God is and who we are. We become more fully sons and daughters of God ourselves in spirit and in truth.
IT’S ABOUT BEING
There’s a difference in those who take a Bible study on the spirit of sonship and those who are sons. The latter release spirit and life.
Non-dualism and its implied oneness with God explains more about Godliness than does religion. Non-dualism tells us that unless we are born again, we will not make sense of this post or discern the Kingdom of God.*
EASE OF DISEASE
If we believe Jesus Christ is our saviour, we belong. But our mode of belonging varies according to our oneness with the Gospel of Christ as it is and not how it may have been presented to us. This makes it possible to exist as a member of the Body of Christ as a fully functioning organ or as a tumour. Christ’s Gospel which is the apostle’s teaching is life-multiplying. Distorted gospels are life-denying and crippling, functioning like a disease in one’s being. %
HERESIES NO 1 AND 2
In the age of the Church Father’s Arianism was the greatest threat to fullness in Christ. In our age it is legalism of which there are various kinds – the most obvious being a doctrinal attachment to the law and the more subtle and pervasive illusion being the notion of salvation by religion/Christianity.
TRINITY IN YOU
This is why the Kingdom of God is not a religion but a person and specifically is it the person of Jesus Christ. Actually it’s more than this. It’s incarnation which is life in the Spirit.
When Paul speaks of Christ our life and declares that Christ is all and in all, this is not an endorsement of Christianity as a religion. It’s not about utilising Jesus to live a religious or even a spiritual life. It’s about Jesus becoming you.
It’s about Christ as the living way that is incarnation. This is the trinity in us and manifesting as Mark and Jane. The most subtle delusion, far more subtle and extensive than the two heresies above, is the illusion that Jesus came to start and maintain Christianity. Not really. He came to multiply Himself as you, George and every Believer.
CHRIST AS US
Thomas Torrance identifies this oneness with God that is ours in Christ. “In Jesus Christ, who was born of Mary and suffered under Pontius, God himself had come into the world in order to be one of us and one with us and reveal himself to us, and that in the one Person of Jesus Christ God and man are inseparably united for us and our salvation. The New Testament does not present Christ in contrast to God or alongside of God, or argue from one to the other.” (1)
NEW CREATION
As Christians we can live as worker/slaves or daughters/sons.
Christ is fully God and fully us. In Him we are united in fellowship and being with the trinity and as such we are the sons of God. Because Christ is your life you are a manifestation of God and as such are fully you in sonship. No dualism here. There’s no Christ plus Christianity. There’s Christ your life. Christ multiplied as us is the church built without human hands. Christ multiplied in the whole world is the new creation Kingdom of God.
* This is why people attached to the law have such appalling spiritual discernment.
% We can make a big deal out of the anointing and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, yet not realise that our gospel is not the Gospel of Jesus and our Christ is not the Christ of God. Here the Believer is operating in a ‘firmament’ that is not the Kingdom of God.
(1) Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (p. 115). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
