THE REAL REST AND THE REST YOU SAY YOU ARE HAVING WHEN YOU ARE TREADING WATER
01/10/24 07:39
Life in Christ is a sabbath rest from self-vindication and self-recommendation. Life in Christ replaces religion. There are varieties of Christianity that burden the Believer in a degree of self-effort that is counter to the Gospel of Jesus, Paul and John. Any form of legalism embeds us in ourselves, so that our focus is a Christian austerity package in which we are obsessed with ‘how we hope we are doing’. Any body of doctrine based on the law does not represent the Gospel of the Christian Church.
TRYING TO CARRY WATER IN A STRING BAG
Legalism may push us to resort to our own abridged formulated pillars of ‘holiness’ in order to manufacture our own grace – which in turn robs us of a fulsome holistic life in Jesus. In The Healing Presence, Leanne Payne observes that such self-adsorption leaves as a non-beings - The state of being workers/slaves rather than sons/daughters in spirit and in truth.
SEEKING WHAT IS ALREADY OURS
Paul Molnar writes, “Any attempt to think from a centre in ourselves simply misses the fact that we have already been justified and sanctified in the person and work of Jesus Christ, the One Mediator.
Thinking from a centre in ourselves, Torrance rightly maintained, always leads either to deistic separation of us from the love of God revealed and active in his Word and Spirit, or to panentheistic/pantheistic ideas that confuse God’s decisive actions for us in his Word and Spirit with ourselves.” (1)
If we have been schooled in the notion of our taking ‘steps to Christ’, we will have missed the basis of our salvation and the Source of genuine spirit and life. Christ took steps to us so that His atonement ends adamic separation and includes us in the communion that is God. This is our starring place. Self-effort suffocates the effect of Christ’s finished work for us, promoting woodenness of soul and dormancy of spirit.
CHRIST YOUR LIFE YOUR REALITY
You have your being in Christ which is to say that your real identity and personhood comes to life from His life with you and in you. The Lord’s Table reminds us that Christ’s life is our life and that Jesus is for us and is us. “Every single human being exists in the human being of Jesus Christ, eternal Son of God. .. “Christ is your life” (see 3:4) and “Christ is your death” (see 3:3). .. Righteousness is not primarily a forensic term to be fitted into a legal scheme of atonement but signifies true life from above, life derived solely from the life of God.” (2)
The basis of our life and the Kingdom Jesus began is his incarnation in us as individuals and the church. This is the source of our healing from emotional disease and our agency as multipliers of His life. We can be life-givers as ourselves without artifice or striving. Christ come in our flesh turns us from a dry creek bed into rivers of living water.
(1) Paul D Molnar in “Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) . Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
(2) McSwain, Jeff. Simul Sanctification: Barth’s Hidden Vision for Human Transformation (Princeton Theological Monograph Series Book 232) (p. 4). Pickwick Publications, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition.
