THE WAY OUT OF A LIFE OF ABSTRACTION
07/10/24 08:31
If we have been raised in a Christian community in which God is seen as the chief legalist, so that our being is a culture of law-living, we need to understand the importance of the Trinity as the Reality of who God is, so as to detach ourselves from the idol of the law that debilitates us by making us figments of ourselves instead of manifestations of Christ.
TRINITARIAN REALITY
The Being of God is Trinity. It is the trinity and the relations between the persons that is the three-personed, one being God. The mode of our union with God in Jesus Christ follows the pattern of the Trinity in that the relationship that Jesus has drawn us into is the kind of relationship that the trinitarian persons have with each other. In this state of being we get to be one with God in the Communion that we call Holy Communion, being oneness with God in the way that the wine and bread become us.
CONTRACT SYNDROME
The relationship that is ours in Christ is in stark contrast to the self-help relationship we may attempt to secure by adherence to the knowledge of good and evil and its laws and behaviours.
In the Introduction to Torrance’s, The Christian Doctrine of God, Paul Molnar observes that, “Athanasius preferred to use verbs instead of nouns when referring to God’s being and action because ‘the three divine persons are inseparably interrelated in being and act through a mutual indwelling and a mutual movement toward and for one another in the homoousial Communion of the Holy Trinity which they constitute’.” (1)
The result of the atonement, Christ’s reconciliation of us with God by the cross is that we have oneness with God that is of the nature of God’s Being. This union has nothing to do with the law because the essence of God is not law. God is not an abstraction but a Trinity of three real persons that live in mutuality. It is this oneness that in Christ has included us in God, so that those who trust in Jesus of the Gospel become the home of Father, son and Holy Spirit. But they are not bouncing around in our being like ping-pong balls. No dualism here. The trinity is woven into our being and we into theirs.
‘“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 14.20 NIV. Jesus’ teaching is that He is our life and our union with God.
Molar continues … “It is hoped that [Torrance’s Christian Doctrine of God] will draw theologians to Torrance’s important work so that they may experience for themselves the power of the Gospel of grace as it came to expression in the doctrine of the Trinity and still comes alive today when that doctrine is rightly understood and expressed.” (1)
The real Gospel of Jesus Christ is not one of moralism, legalism or the culture of the knowledge of good and evil in a Christian form. It’s Christ for you expressed as you. False gospels start with Christ and end with the law. The One Gospel starts with Christ and ends with Christ expressed as you.
“The essence of the Gospel [is] that God has come among us and become one with us in such a reconciling and miraculous way as to demolish the barriers of our creaturely distance and estrangement from him, and has spoken to us directly and intimately about himself in Jesus Christ his beloved Son. In him he has made himself known to us as God the Father Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible, the one Lord and Saviour of mankind.” (2)
We can, as a law-obsessive, attempt a contract with Christ in the manner of I will do this so that you will do that. This is not the pearl of great price because it makes us an abstraction and a person of non-being. If we live in captivity to religion/legalism we are separated from the glory of who we could be growing into as maturing daughters and sons. “As such we can pray for a very specific healing: prayer that a sense of being or of well-being be set into [us], replacing the void of non-being.” (3)
(1) Introduction. In Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) . Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
(2) Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (p. 16). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
(3) Payne, Leanne. The Healing Presence (p. 145). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition
TRINITARIAN REALITY
The Being of God is Trinity. It is the trinity and the relations between the persons that is the three-personed, one being God. The mode of our union with God in Jesus Christ follows the pattern of the Trinity in that the relationship that Jesus has drawn us into is the kind of relationship that the trinitarian persons have with each other. In this state of being we get to be one with God in the Communion that we call Holy Communion, being oneness with God in the way that the wine and bread become us.
CONTRACT SYNDROME
The relationship that is ours in Christ is in stark contrast to the self-help relationship we may attempt to secure by adherence to the knowledge of good and evil and its laws and behaviours.
In the Introduction to Torrance’s, The Christian Doctrine of God, Paul Molnar observes that, “Athanasius preferred to use verbs instead of nouns when referring to God’s being and action because ‘the three divine persons are inseparably interrelated in being and act through a mutual indwelling and a mutual movement toward and for one another in the homoousial Communion of the Holy Trinity which they constitute’.” (1)
The result of the atonement, Christ’s reconciliation of us with God by the cross is that we have oneness with God that is of the nature of God’s Being. This union has nothing to do with the law because the essence of God is not law. God is not an abstraction but a Trinity of three real persons that live in mutuality. It is this oneness that in Christ has included us in God, so that those who trust in Jesus of the Gospel become the home of Father, son and Holy Spirit. But they are not bouncing around in our being like ping-pong balls. No dualism here. The trinity is woven into our being and we into theirs.
‘“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 14.20 NIV. Jesus’ teaching is that He is our life and our union with God.
Molar continues … “It is hoped that [Torrance’s Christian Doctrine of God] will draw theologians to Torrance’s important work so that they may experience for themselves the power of the Gospel of grace as it came to expression in the doctrine of the Trinity and still comes alive today when that doctrine is rightly understood and expressed.” (1)
The real Gospel of Jesus Christ is not one of moralism, legalism or the culture of the knowledge of good and evil in a Christian form. It’s Christ for you expressed as you. False gospels start with Christ and end with the law. The One Gospel starts with Christ and ends with Christ expressed as you.
“The essence of the Gospel [is] that God has come among us and become one with us in such a reconciling and miraculous way as to demolish the barriers of our creaturely distance and estrangement from him, and has spoken to us directly and intimately about himself in Jesus Christ his beloved Son. In him he has made himself known to us as God the Father Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible, the one Lord and Saviour of mankind.” (2)
We can, as a law-obsessive, attempt a contract with Christ in the manner of I will do this so that you will do that. This is not the pearl of great price because it makes us an abstraction and a person of non-being. If we live in captivity to religion/legalism we are separated from the glory of who we could be growing into as maturing daughters and sons. “As such we can pray for a very specific healing: prayer that a sense of being or of well-being be set into [us], replacing the void of non-being.” (3)
(1) Introduction. In Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) . Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
(2) Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (p. 16). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
(3) Payne, Leanne. The Healing Presence (p. 145). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition
