THE BODY OF CHRIST IS NOT JUST A LABEL
01/09/23 08:09
The Body of Christ means that we are not just of the being of Christ by name, but that we are one with Him by incarnation. An achieved union with God for us by Christ comes to us by His atoning sacrifice and by the fact that His resurrected self lives in us by the Spirit and we actually participate in Christ’s Person. This is a fuller grace and a more complete sanctification than many Believers live, since they may live Christ as a religion rather than an incarnation.
THE POVERTY MENTALITY
We are the poorer if we live the poverty mentality version of the Gospel – which is a Christian version of the knowledge of good and evil. Our inheritance is life in the Spirit which means Christ for us and as us.
All who believe may participate in Christ. This occurs through oneness with His person and never through moralism, works of the law or religion - all of which are external and separate to the union that is ours in Christ and which He has won for us with the triune God.
DUALIST FALLACY
Your Christ-life means that Adamic separation is undone, and you and God are one. An assumed dualism is a legacy of the fall and the dichotomous thinking of the knowledge of good and evil. Thus, real Kingdom Life is found in Paul’s ‘Christ who is our life’ rather than in the mind of a separated self, attempting to earn Christ- who has already earned us and made us one with God. There is no dualism in genuine Kingdom Life.
DELUSION OF DUALISM
Thomas Torrance observes, “When the Christian Church spread out from its centre in Judaea into the Mediterranean world its preaching and teaching of the Gospel came up against a radical dualism of body and mind that pervaded every aspect of Graeco-Roman civilisation, bifurcating human experience and affecting fundamental habits of mind in religion, philosophy and science alike. or mind in religion, philosophy and science alike.
The Platonic separation between the sensible world and the intelligible world .. governed the disjunction between action and reflection, event and idea, becoming and being, the material and the spiritual, the visible and the invisible, the temporal and the eternal .. The combined effect of this all-pervading dualism
was to shut God out of the world of empirical actuality in space and time.” Some Christian denominations are founded on this dualism.
SACRED/SECULAR DICHOTOMY
The essence of legalism is dualism and its imagined separation from God. In this mindset we may work to gain union with God by good works. A more common charismatic ‘earning’ may be sought through ‘praise and worship’. People do experience the presence in such services, but this is the Presence that was there all the time by the incarnation – Christ with us and in us.
‘Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them’ John 14.23 NIV. Christ’s teaching is that He is our life.
PRESENCE IS IN YOU
It’s an illusion to think that we are separated from Christ by our sins, by insufficient good works or by a non-manifestation of ‘the Presence.’ There are worship songs about the joy of “His Presence that assume that this is something we evoke ourselves, or that this Presence is sporadic and found in religious places like the church or the front of the church or near the worship band. Thankfully when we believe Father, Son and Holy Spirit make their home in us and we become their habitation.
In Christ we are included in God and we belong. This is our starting place from which we advance from glory to glory.
THE POVERTY MENTALITY
We are the poorer if we live the poverty mentality version of the Gospel – which is a Christian version of the knowledge of good and evil. Our inheritance is life in the Spirit which means Christ for us and as us.
All who believe may participate in Christ. This occurs through oneness with His person and never through moralism, works of the law or religion - all of which are external and separate to the union that is ours in Christ and which He has won for us with the triune God.
DUALIST FALLACY
Your Christ-life means that Adamic separation is undone, and you and God are one. An assumed dualism is a legacy of the fall and the dichotomous thinking of the knowledge of good and evil. Thus, real Kingdom Life is found in Paul’s ‘Christ who is our life’ rather than in the mind of a separated self, attempting to earn Christ- who has already earned us and made us one with God. There is no dualism in genuine Kingdom Life.
DELUSION OF DUALISM
Thomas Torrance observes, “When the Christian Church spread out from its centre in Judaea into the Mediterranean world its preaching and teaching of the Gospel came up against a radical dualism of body and mind that pervaded every aspect of Graeco-Roman civilisation, bifurcating human experience and affecting fundamental habits of mind in religion, philosophy and science alike. or mind in religion, philosophy and science alike.
The Platonic separation between the sensible world and the intelligible world .. governed the disjunction between action and reflection, event and idea, becoming and being, the material and the spiritual, the visible and the invisible, the temporal and the eternal .. The combined effect of this all-pervading dualism
was to shut God out of the world of empirical actuality in space and time.” Some Christian denominations are founded on this dualism.
SACRED/SECULAR DICHOTOMY
The essence of legalism is dualism and its imagined separation from God. In this mindset we may work to gain union with God by good works. A more common charismatic ‘earning’ may be sought through ‘praise and worship’. People do experience the presence in such services, but this is the Presence that was there all the time by the incarnation – Christ with us and in us.
‘Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them’ John 14.23 NIV. Christ’s teaching is that He is our life.
PRESENCE IS IN YOU
It’s an illusion to think that we are separated from Christ by our sins, by insufficient good works or by a non-manifestation of ‘the Presence.’ There are worship songs about the joy of “His Presence that assume that this is something we evoke ourselves, or that this Presence is sporadic and found in religious places like the church or the front of the church or near the worship band. Thankfully when we believe Father, Son and Holy Spirit make their home in us and we become their habitation.
In Christ we are included in God and we belong. This is our starting place from which we advance from glory to glory.
