WHEN THE GIFTS ARE NOT A DISTRACTION
08/10/24 12:42
The Holy Spirit, the gifts and the anointing are never the Kingdom of God by themselves. The point to it and they are the fruit of the Vine. The vine is the Christ who has made us one with God by joining us to the trinity and the trinity to us. You are joined to God in Christ. He is your joining/union.
BOLTED ON
The anointing and gifts bolted onto the old covenant and the law are not the Kingdom of God. A gospel of signs and gifts in a not-full gospel. Your reconciliation with God is the base of our God-Life. This reconciliation took place in Jesus and is Jesus.
A life of Kingdom Agency that is much more than Christianity as a religion or a moral program is here for all. It’s here in plain sight in the expression of God as His People. This is the meaning of sonship and the Body of Christ – we are the expression of God in the world. This is the incarnation of the trinity in you.
The cross brings about the revelation of who God is. It’s also the at-one-ment and the undoing of Adamic separation. Jesus’ cross is the atonement and the atonement brings union. By the Spirit, the incarnation is made a reality in our lives. This is Christ come in our flesh and more. The trinity in us and the church.
NOT A FORCE
“Neither in the Old Testament nor in the New Testament is the Spirit of God regarded as the emission of some divine force detachable from God … With the coming of the Spirit the Lord fulfilled his promise not to leave his disciples orphaned but to come himself among them in such a way that they would know that he is in the Father and that they are in him and he is in them. As Jesus himself shows us the Father, the Spirit shows us Christ, and makes us know the Father in the Son.” (1)
THE HUB
Jesus is in the Father and we are in him and he is in us. This is the hub of life in God – when we are in the Hub and the Hub is in us and more. The Hub becomes us. This is the meaning of our life in Christ and the new creation progressed. It’s Christ in you and in us. The weaving together of Father and the sons and daughters of God.*
ORPHANED RELIGION
The point is that if we make a ‘thing’ and a religion out of the Spirit and the gifts we may still be ‘orphaned’ as some are - since, much of their churchianity is organised around ‘gaining the presence’ in praise and worship or ‘earning acceptance with God’ if not through the law, through the ‘law of Christian practice.’ But your placement in God in Christ is yours already.
Myk Habets writes, “Jesus Christ is the Truth who has accommodated himself to humanity in an economic condescension. He is also a man who hears and obeys the Divine Word in his incarnate life. As such he provides for us in his own obedient Sonship, within our human nature, the way whereby we are carried up to knowledge of God the Father – the attainment of true life.”
The presence is already in us and with us not poetically but in reality by way of incarnation. We participate in Christ’s Person as the living way – the way known as life in the Spirit. This is the reality that is the union of the Christ and us in new covenant communion. This is the meaning of the Lord’s Table and the celebration of our one substance in Christ. This living makes the Kingdom real and establishes us as Life-Givers.
* The issue of Godliness and our life in God is nothing so banal and depersonalised as the abstraction of the law and the fog of religion. It really is Christ our life.
Torrance, Thomas F.. The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (T&T Clark Cornerstones) (p. 64,65). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
